Folder Access Denied How to delete any folder in Windows. One of the most bemusing errors in Windows is the infamous You require permission from blah blah blah to make changes to this folder. The irony is that even the almighty Administrator isnt exempt from this problem. You thought signing into your box as an Admin gave your carte blanche access to the kingdom didnt youIn computing, a temporary folder or temporary directory is a directory used to hold temporary files. Many operating systems and some software automatically delete the. I seem to have a lot of junk files in appdataLocalTemp also accessible via environment variables TEMP and TMP. Is it safe to delete these Also, is it safe. How to Delete Temporary Files in Windows 7. This wikiHow teaches you how to remove temporary files from your Windows 7 computer. To do this, you must first enable. RdgoEbsFs/Va72uESCENI/AAAAAAAAEzI/LElx-Ytv17Y/s1600/DiskCleanupTempFilesStart.png' alt='Can I Delete Contents Of Windows Temp Folder' title='Can I Delete Contents Of Windows Temp Folder' />You thought the administrator had unfettered and absolute reign over the entire file system didnt you You thought the omnipotent admin could do virtually anything in Windows right I know I did, thats why I was so incensed the first time I encountered this error. What do you mean I cant perform this action Im the damn Administrator of this computerI demand my rights Hey, youre not alone. The error is annoying that its almost crass. In this guide Im going to show you how to get reclaim your authority as the administrator of your computer. Two approaches. The first thing you need to do is take ownership of the folder you want to axe. In one deft move were going to take over the folder and bend it into submission. Its time to make this stupid error desist Right click on the folder you want to banish to oblivion and choose Properties. Under the Security tab click the Advanced button. Along the top of the Advanced Security Settings dialog box for the folder youll see the Name and Owner. In my case, someone named Trusted. Can I Delete Contents Of Windows Temp Folder' title='Can I Delete Contents Of Windows Temp Folder' />Installer has exclusive rights to this folder. Who is this Trusted. Installer guy The Trusted. Installer is a built in account which installs, modifies and removes Windows updates and components. But heres the thing if the Trusted. Installer is the owner of a folder then you shouldnt take ownership of that folder unless you really know what youre doing thats because if you rename and delete such a folder you may render your system unusable. Syncing to a network drive Creating a network drive out of a ShareFile folder Mapping a folder inside the ShareFile sync folder ShareFile Sync for Windows version 3. OK, so this worked for me and maybe will work for you in Windows 7. I had a bunch of folders with pictures that I wanted to delete and I clicked on the group and got. Describes how to delete the contents of the Temporary Internet Files folder from the computer. Im going change the ownership of this folder for this demonstration but in reality you shouldnt ever need to do this on your computer. Incidentally, if youre running Windows 7 or Vista you can change the owner by clicking the Owner tab and choosing the Edit button. Back in Windows 8. Check Names button and choose OK. Youll get whisked back to the Advanced Security Settings screen but notice the owner is updated and theres a little checkbox under it called Replace owner on subcontainers and objects. Make sure you put a little check in there so you become the owner of not only the parent folder but everything in it too. Alright now click Apply. Windows will bark at you about reopening the properties before you can change permissions. Thats what were going to do next, click OK and and close out of all the windows except for the one that shows the folder you want to access. If you try to delete it youll get an even sillier error message this time Notice it says that I require permission from FBV PCVonnie to make changes to this folder. This message invariably shows up no matter how many times I click Try Again. What the Ok so we have one more step to fix this inane problem we basically need to explicitly give ourselves Full Control of the folder. Right click on the folder again, choose Properties, go back to the Security tab and click the Advanced button. Back in the Advanced Security Settings window select the user you want to allow from the Permission entries list and make sure Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object is checked highlighted in yellow below. Then click the Edit button. Now in the Permission Entry window check Full control and click OK all the way through until all the permissions and properties windows are closed. If you see a nebulous message about inheritance click Yes. Windows is cordially informing you that any permissions defined on any subfolders are going to be overridden by the permissions you defined at this top level folder which in my case is Windows Media Player. Now you can delete the folder you wanted without Windows nagging you about permissions. Get Unlocker. If this doesnt work for some reason try using Cedrick Collombs excellent freeware program called Unlocker. Unlocker has been tested and works great on Windows XP, Vista and 7 but Im not sure if it works in Windows 8. Just make sure you pay attention when going through the installation tool because if you blithely click Next through each screen youll unwittingly install adware on your computer. Make sure you click Skip on theseI actually managed to install Unlocker on my Windows 8. If a program is running in memory and you try to delete the folder that contains the executable Windows will shrug its shoulders and spit on you The action cant be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program. Just right click the folder and choose Unlocker from the menu to delete it. The Bottom Line. When Windows says No it not only sucks but also conjures morbid memories of HAL in 2. A Space Odyssey. In Arthur C. Clarkes famous Space Odyssey series,  HAL was the ultrasmart computer that made the unilateral decision to kill the astronauts when Hal learned it was about to be disconnected. Admittedly, computers havent evolved to that point yet but its still disconcerting when Windows refuses to do something even when you feel you have the permissions to do so. I hope this article helped you get your sanity back. If it helped you in any way or you have questions, Id love to hear about in the comments Happy Friday all. Cannot delete file or folder. This article describes different methods to delete files or folders that cannot be deleted normally. After trying the following methods, please click here to let us all know your results. Table of contentsfor this article. Reboot. Reboot, then delete. DEL or RMDIROpen a command line window Windows. Key R, enter cmd. Move to the folder in question by means of CD commands like CD and CD foldername. Delete the file or folder by using the DEL command to delete files or the RMDIR remove directory command to remove directories folders. Kill explorer. exe. If this, on its own, is still not enough, then leave the command line window on the desktop, open Task Manager Ctrl Shift Esc, and kill all explorer. Your desktop will go blank, except for the windows already open. Now try to delete the offending file by means of the DEL command, or folder by means of the RMDIR remove directory command, in the command line window, as described above. After that, in the command line window enter explorerto restart your desktop. If you closed the command line window, you can still restart explorer by opening the Task Manager by holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys and briefly pressing the Esc key. In Task Manager select Applications, New Task and enter explorer. Log off. If the previous method fails, particularly with multimedia files, log off, then log on again, but do not select the file in Windows Explorer. The safest way is not to open Windows Explorer in the first place. Then try the previous method again. Reboot again. An even stronger measure would be to reboot, then try the previous methods again. This would work, for example, if a service has the file open. Delete containing folderThanks to John Barrington If you cant delete a problem file, try deleting the folder that contains the problem file. If this doesnt work, try this next item. If the problem file and its folder, well call A, is within another folder, well call B, try to delete the folder B along with any troublesome contents. Of course, you want to make sure, if you have any other important files or folders within either folder, that they are saved in another location first. Use RMDIR on containing folder. Begin like the previous method, but try alsormdir s foldernamereplace foldernamewith the name of the folder to be deleted. This command should delete a folder with all its subfolders. If the folder name contains one or more spaces, enclose it in quotes. Example rmdir s folder nameNote that the abbreviated command rd can be used in place of rmdir. Use short name. If the folder name contains strange characters, use a command line window again, but use the DIR X command to find the short name for example PROGRA1 and use the short name instead. The short name is DOS compatible and has no more than 8 characters for the main name, a period, then no more than 3 characters for the extension. Retry the previous methods that use a command line window, but use the short name now. Note Sometimes an illegal file name can cause Windows Explorer to use nearly 1. CPU time. Thanks to astk. Sometimes the abbreviated name can have a number other than one and can have an extension. If the above does not work, proceed as follows. Open a command line window Start, Run, type cmd, press the returnenter key. Navigate to the folder using cd . Type dir x to see the actual real short name of the subdirectory. Critically This may include an extension, e. ABDCEF1. XYZ. Type rmdir s abcdef1. Safe mode. Boot into safe mode and try to delete the file or folder there. Stop program. If youre trying to delete a program file, like one with the extension. Stop it, then delete the file. If the program starts automatically, check the article Autorun causes on how to remove the start command. Do it, reboot, then delete the file. Rename or move during next boot. If this also doesnt work, there is a way to rename or move a file or folder during the boot process. For this you need to use the registry editor REGEDIT. EXE. See the Registry warning for a general warning. Create a multi text value in. HKEYLOCALMACHINESYSTEMCurrent. Control. SetControlSession Managernamed Pending. File. Rename. Operations of type REGMULTISZ. In pre XP Windows versions you have to use REGEDT3. EXE to create this value type. The first line of each pair is the current file or folder path and name with in front of it. The second line of each pair is the new file or folder path and name with in front of it. Virtual Dj Studio 7 Crack Derby there. Example for one pair which moves the file mfc. C TEMPmfc. 42. C WINDOWSsystem. You can add as many pairs as you like. The move operation is performed directly after the next reboot. You can also give folder paths, so the folder will be renamed. But both paths have to be local. There is a Windows API call for this, named Move. File. Ex, and somebody in Germany has even written a utility named Move. Ex for it. You can download it from http wwwthep. Use it if you need this function often. A Posix utility from a Windows Resource Kit named mv. Use another operating system. Boot into another operating system to delete the file from there. The other operating system can be, for example, another installation of Windows, Bart. PE, Knoppix, Ubuntu, or any operating system that can read the file system used NTFS or FAT3. Connect hard disk to other computer. Remove the hard disk from the computer and connect it to another computer. Delete the files or folders there. Use unlock utility. If you cannot delete a file or folder because it is in use, you can use one of the mostly free utilities, such as Unlocker. Internet Explorer 8 issues a warning when you open that page, but as far as I can tell I checked the code of the page at least superficially in March 2. Shorten names. If the cause is that the path and file name is too long, first try to rename folders in the path with shorter names. If that doesnt work, you can use the following method, reported 2. Mark Briody Open a command line window and use the subst command to create a virtual drive to the folder containing the long file name, e. C Documents and SettingsbriodymFavoritesMarkGadgets and HardwareHardwareStorese. Buyer. Then change to the virtual drive x, and you should be able to delete, rename, and move files and folders. Finally, to clean up, remove the subst again with subst x d. Deal with hidden or system filesThanks to warpcoil, who first described this method in a comment belowThis method deals with files that carry the hidden or system attribute. You can delete such files in Windows Explorer, if you set the folder options such that these files are shown in the first place, but the following method can delete them from a command line window. Open a command line window and navigate to the offending folder by means of the cd command. Show all files, using the attrib command. Note the attributes displayed as single letters on the left side of the listing Letter Attribute. RRead only. HHidden.