How to Delete a Stubborn Folder in Windows

I encountered a unusual challenge the diversified day after I turned into looking to beautiful up one of my laborious drives sooner than copying its contents to one more pressure: I couldn’t delete a folder. Technically, I turned into looking to bag rid of a a folder within a folder within a folder by deleting the tip-stage folder—a mouthful, I know—but House windows wouldn’t delete it. In accordance with the OS, it couldn’t gather the final folder in the tree; since that turned into missing, it couldn’t delete the relaxation.

I’d in overall try and bag out of this yelp by rebooting into superior mode and seeing if that mounted whatever yelp House windows turned into having. I turned into feeling inactive, nonetheless; inactive, and outlandish to ogle if there turned into any diversified formula I may utilize to ditch the unwelcome nested folders without having to shut out of all my work and extinguish minutes going through two paunchy diagram restarts.

I’m able to’t capture where I discovered my repair from, or else I’d happily credit the originator for this excellent solution, but right here’s how I turned into ready to in a roundabout scheme delete that random folder that House windows claims it couldn’t gather. One caveat: This may increasingly or may not work if you happen to’re having a equal yelp. I in fact haven’t any thought why House windows turned into being so fussy in the first space, and I haven’t skilled this yelp since, or else I’d try and replicate the diagram to ogle if this trick continually works.

How to repair House windows when it’s fussy about deleting files

Mosey have interaction 7-Zip. It’s a excellent start-supply program to acquire readily readily in the market for unpacking all forms of archives, love the ZIP and RAR files you presumably mature to coping with. That you just will almost definitely be ready to utilize this trick with equal tools love WinRAR, but I in fact acquire 7-Zip, and that’s what labored for me.

Since House windows turned into having disaster figuring out that the final folder amongst just a few nested folders even existed—Inception’s limbo, not its hotel scene—I had to first navigate to the folder that contained this mystery folder. In diversified words, the mum or dad folder of the folder that House windows allegedly may not gather, but turned into mocking me with its immortality gorgeous there in File Explorer.

I then gorgeous-clicked on the “missing” folder, selected the 7-Zip likelihood in the context menu, and clicked on “Add to archive.” An unconventional step? Certain. Hear me out.

After that, I checked the choice to “Delete files after compression” within 7-Zip’s “Add to archive” window. And that’s it. I clicked “OK” to open the app, which created a .7z archive file of my empty “missing” folder and deleted it out of File Explorer. Poof!

With that atypical folder in a roundabout scheme zapped out of existence, I went abet to the tip-stage folder and performed a clear-cut shift-delete, wiping the full folder tree out of existence.

I’m soundless not somewhat certain how or why this trick managed to repair my yelp—figuring out and deleting one thing House windows may not. Precise to manufacture certain that I wasn’t loopy, I pulled up an earlier backup of the nested folders and tried to delete every little thing by having 7-Zip archive and delete the tip-stage folder. No success. Except I killed the buried mystery folder, its folks would not trudge away. Chalk this one as a lot as “House windows quirks that pressure you nuts.”