File that just won't delete

[benjamil]

Hi all

I've been lazy setting up my new computer, and I've installed Windows 7 Ultimate on an SSD, and just hooked up the HDD from my old one intact. I don't want to format my HDD, since it's got a lot of documents, pictures etc. on it. But I did want to delete the old Program Files, and the redundant Windows installation. Which has worked just fine using the takeown + icacls routine.

This has left me with one single file, D:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil10b.exe which just won't delete. I've tried the takeown + icacls routine in safe mode, but it still won't go. Takeown returns "successful" and icacls returns "processed", but when I try to delete or attrib -r it still says "access denied"...

Any ideas?

 

[Maguscreed]

It does sound like a ownership issue.
You can use the recovery console which should ignore basically any file attributes.

Or you could try the old trick of killing the explorer process then attempting the delete (though that shouldn't matter in this scenario where the disc is no longer the system disc)
Last thing I can think of is to make sure the disc isn't still marked as a system/ boot disc in disc manager.

 

[benjamil]

Resolved

Hi again

I ended up deleting the file after removing the "Authenticated Users" group's special permissions on the HDD. Thanks for the recommendations anyway.

- Benjamin