A Windows trick I discovered awhile back that someone might find useful Folders that can't be deleted

[Calavera]

I meant to post this quite awhile ago but was just reminded of it recently.

Have you ever had a folder on your computer that for whatever reason you couldn't delete? I had a couple folders that Windows would not let me delete no matter what I tried. I tried the command line, safe mode and several other things but it just wouldn't delete. I'm thinking I could delete every file from the folder except for one. It wasn't in use and wasn't a virus, if I'm remembering right it was something to do with the name of the file(I also couldn't rename the file) but I found a super easy way to delete any folder.

Just rename the folder to Windows.old and run a Disk Cleanup for system files and it will show up as "Previous Windows Installation" run the cleanup and voila! Your folder and files are now erased! The dumb thing about this is that Windows obviously could delete but just refused to for whatever reason.

I also did this on a secondary drive I put into my computer that had Windows installed on it. It also had a bunch of other stuff I wanted to keep but I didn't want the 30gb or so Windows folder. Windows wouldn't delete it normally but all I had to do was rename it to Windows.old run disk cleanup and then it had no problem totally deleting it! It deleted it super quick and didn't ask me a million times if I was sure I wanted to delete a system file.

Hopefully someone will find this information useful. It isn't super common that you can't delete a folder normally in Windows but when it happens it is annoying and this is a really easy way to delete it. When I was looking for a way to delete an "undeletable" folder I found all kinds of answers that were of no help. I ended up figuring out the Windows.old trick on my own. So I don't think it is really commonly known but if you already knew about it let me know. And if it helped you delete a folder you couldn't get rid of let me know that too!

[Dr. Zoidberg]

We will now call you Mr. Windows!