Yeah,, these methods always work. I also had a file occupying some gigs, so stubborn, wouldn't get away by any method... Fortunately, had a Kaspersky rescue disc lying around. Booted off it, went to the file manager, pressed the Del button and tada,, gone. No hiccupps or messing around with windows and it's pop-ups...
Hi all.
Wow....a lot of responses!!! More than I thought I would get!
But....the Windows.old folder still won't go away.
On the Disk Cleanup suggestion: I do not get "Clean up system files" button when I try this; it's just not there, it's missing. It can be seen here in Step 3 of this link:
Windows.old Folder - Delete
I tried this link suggested:
Diagnose and repair Windows File and Folder Problems automatically
and ran this file: Mats_Run.WinFileFolder; it did not work.
I also followed the link and downloaded the program "File Shredder". When running the program, it "hung up" and I get the error message from Windows that the program has stopped responding, and then I closed it.
When I tried the program "File Assassin", it claimed that the file was "not found"......even though I'm looking right at it and selecting it!!! Weird.
If I were to try and edit my Registry (and yes, I've done it before), how would I go about doing it for the "Windows.old" folder? Should I just "search" within the Registry? I tried "Edit/ Find" and no results came back.
Linux Live CD?? Don't know much about it.
Any other suggestions or ideas? The Windows.old folder is not huge in size anymore, but the fact that it's there and won't let me delete it is bugging me.
Thanks for any more tips or info.
Pez
here is an alternate disk cleanup:
Disk Cleanup : Extended
have you tried any deletion methods from safe mode?
do this, then try to delete the contents of the folder, then try to delete the folder:
Show hidden files
To take ownership of a folder
Change a read-only file
- Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
- Click the Security tab, click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
- Click Edit.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
- Click the name of the person you want to give ownership to.
- If you want that person to be the owner of files and subfolders in this folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
- Click OK.
Setting a file to read-only helps you to protect the file from accidental deletion and changes to the file's content. If a file is set to read-only, you will not be able to save changes to it unless you turn off the file's read-only status.
you could also try renaming the folder and/or files before trying to delete them.
- Find the file you want to edit.
- Right-click the file, and then click Properties.
- Click the General tab, clear the Read-only check box, and then click OK.
- Edit and save your file as needed.
you can try this too. either from an elevated command prompt from within windows, and/or from startup repair, before windows loads:
How to delete a folder in command prompt | Windows 7 Themes
Try register editor (regedit) also check if it has attributes of 'read only' for some reason and un-check that. I use a computer cleaning tool called CCleaner ( Piriform - Download CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva, Speccy - Millions of users worldwide! ) . It does two types of sweeps: A basic cleaner macro that cleans multiple windows objects; and registry cleaner which deletes old, unused, and files that are no longer whole.
Good luck sir
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