How to Delete a Stubborn Folder in Windows
I ran into a bizarre problem the other day when I was trying to clear one of my hard drives before copying its contents to another drive : I couldn’t delete a folder. Technically, I was trying to get rid of a folder within a folder within a folder by deleting the top-level folder – I know it wasn’t easy – but Windows didn’t delete it. According to the OS, she could not find the most recent folder in the tree; since he was absent, he could not delete anything.
I usually try to fix this problem by rebooting into Safe Mode and checking if that fixes the issue Windows is facing. However, I felt lazy; lazy and curious to know if there is any other method I could use to get rid of unwanted subfolders without shutting down all my work and wasting minutes on two full system restarts.
I can’t remember where I found my fix, or else I would happily entrust the creator with this excellent solution, but here’s how I was able to finally delete this random folder that Windows claims it couldn’t find. One caveat: this may or may not work if you have a similar situation. I have no idea why Windows was so fussy in the first place, and I haven’t run into this issue since then, otherwise I would try to reproduce the solution to see if this trick always works.
How to fix Windows when it’s fussing about deleting files
Take 7-Zip . It is an excellent open source program for unpacking all kinds of archives such as ZIP and RAR files that you have probably dealt with. You might be able to use this trick with similar tools like WinRAR, but I have 7-Zip and this is what worked for me.
Since Windows couldn’t figure out that the last folder among multiple subfolders existed at all – an Inception dangling state , not a hotel scene – I had to first navigate to the folder containing this mysterious folder. In other words, the parent folder of a folder that Windows supposedly couldn’t find, but mocked me with its immortality right here in Explorer.
Then I right-clicked the “missing” folder, selected the 7-Zip option from the context menu, and clicked Add to Archive. An unconventional move? Yes. Listen to me.
After that I checked the “Delete files after compression” option in the “Add to archive” window of 7-Zip. And it’s all. I clicked OK to launch the application that created a .7z zip file of my empty “missing” folder and deleted it from explorer. Poof!
When this weird folder finally ceased to exist, I went back to the top-level folder and did a simple move and delete, destroying the entire folder tree.
I’m still not entirely sure how and why this trick helped solve my problem – identify and remove what Windows could not. To make sure I’m not crazy, I made an earlier backup of the subfolders and tried to delete everything with a 7-Zip archive and delete the top level folder. Bad luck. If I don’t kill the buried secret folder, her parents are not going anywhere. Place it in the Windows Quirks That Drive You Crazy category.