How To: Delete a Stubborn Undeletable Folder in Windows



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Sometimes you can delete files or folders that cannot be deleted on your Windows computer. If you delete such non-erasable files or folders, you may receive an error message: This item could not be found.

Sometimes the name of the folder is something like “My folder. If you look at the end of the file you noticed, there is a space at the end of the file. If Windows 8, 8.1, or even 10 is installed on your PC, you can try to create a folder that ends with spaces, and you will see that Windows automatically deletes the space at the end or beginning of the file name!

Many of you would find yourself in situations where you cannot delete a file or folder, no matter how you try. This article describes how to delete files or folders that are persistent or not erasable when you use normal methods.

Reboot your system

As I said, the technical overview of Windows 10 is still very unstable. And sometimes it is enough to restart the computer and the problem is solved.

Not only in this case there are disadvantages, for example, many people have said that they can’t always open the boot menu, but when they restart their computer everything works fine.



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Rename a folder

This path is collected by a user in the Windows forum. The reason is that the path and file name are too long, try renaming the unwanted, unnecessary or empty folder by adding a shorter folder at the end of the folder name, then right-click on the folder, choose “delete”, finally the folder disappears.

Using the Command Prompt

Can’t you delete an empty folder that is opened in another program? The command prompt can help you. The command prompt to delete folders is sometimes more effective, so you should try it.

Press Win + R on your PC and type “cmd”, then open the command prompt as administrator. Type this command line “RD /S /Q %SystemDrive%\windows.old” (replace windows.old with your old name) and press Enter. You are now obliged to successfully delete it.

Using the 7-Zip compression program

Get 7-Zip. It is an excellent open source program for decompressing all kinds of archives, such as ZIP and RAR files that you probably had to deal with. You may be able to use this trick with tools similar to WinRAR, but I have 7-Zip, and it worked for me.

Since Windows had trouble understanding that the last of some nested folders existed – the Inception Limbus, not the hotel scene – I first had to navigate to the folder that contained this mystery folder. In other words, the parent folder of the folder that Windows couldn’t have found, but laughed at me with its immortality right there in the File Explorer.

Then right-click on the “missing” folder, select 7-Zip from the context menu and click on “Add to archive”. An unconventional step? Yes. Let me finish. Let me finish.

Then I activated the “Delete files after compression” option in the Add to archive window of 7-Zip. And that’s all. I clicked on “OK” to launch the application that created a.7z archive file from my empty “missing” folder and deleted it from the file explorer.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/how-do-i-delete-stubborn-files-and-folders-win-7/66783446-ad03-4ac7-885d-1161df62e6f0



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