Windows 10: Problem with deleting directories from the c dive.

I have about 500 empty directories on my c: drive with names like the ones pasted below. I believe a failed Quicken install left them there. Anyway, normally this would be no big deal, but in this case, they are all at the root level and it makes my "real" directories hard to find. I've tired several things to get rid of them. Here's an example of one of my attempts from an Administrators command shell:

dir *.tmp
. . .
09/11/2015 04:51 PM <DIR> QuiFAC7.tmp
09/11/2015 04:51 PM <DIR> QuiFAC8.tmp
09/11/2015 04:51 PM <DIR> QuiFAD9.tmp
0 File(s) 0 bytes
501 Dir(s) 1,337,724,145,664 bytes free

C:\>rmdir quifad9.tmp
Access is denied.


C:\>takeown /f quifad9.tmp /a


SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "C:\quifad9.tmp" now owned by the administrators group.


C:\>rmdir quifad9.tmp
Access is denied.

I've tried it with PowerShell and with the "hidden" Administrator id, no luck. I also tried to change the security setting for the c: drive itself, also with no luck. Do any of you have a PowerShell script or something similar which will remove these annoying empty directories?

John




:)

 

Cannot delete application shortcut from desktop

You can try to navigate to your C:\Users\Public\Desktop or C:\Users\Default\Desktop directory and see if it is there. If so, try and delete it from that directory. Please let me know if that helps.

 

Deleting C:|msi*.tmp empty folders

Thanks.

But I did not say the empty directories were malware. I said that the program that Microsoft posted on one of its responses was labeled malware by its own operating system, Windows 10. Win-10 told me that the Microsoft program was not safe because it's certificate
was not valid - it advised me not to run it.

I am fine with deleting the empty directories ---- they cannot be really important since they have zero bytes.

I also tried to use Disk Cleanup but it did not do anything - I suppose this is (as you say) because these are empty directories, not files. And deleting them would not free much disk space. However, having 104 extra empty directories in C:\ is unsightly.

Again - the problem is that Windows will not allow the empty directories {C:\msi*.tmp] to be deleted even with administrator privileges. And it will not allow me to take ownership and delete them either.

Incidentally, all of these files are from 2013. It appears that I was able to delete the more recent directories.

 

Hi TexasJohn and welcome to Tenforums.

Perhaps you can try booting to this custom Win10PE disk one of our members has prepared.
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

You can try deleting the directories that way.

 

The trick is to delete them without Windows running. Thus if you have Windows installation media, you can boot from that, select Repair, Troubleshooting, and navigate to a command prompt.

 

The owner of an object doesn't necessarily have authority to do anything with it (except change authority). You have to both take ownership and grant authority - it was the second step you were missing.

As they are directories you should specify /r on takeown and /t on icacls to recurse through any contained files/directories also.
Code: takeown /f quifad9.tmp /r icacls quifad9.tmp /grant "%USERDOMAIN%\%USERNAME%"F) /t[/quote]
If they are locked though you'll need to delete them from outside windows (or at least when whatever is locking them isn't running) as mentioned in the posts above.

 

Thank you, the icacls command did the trick. All those directories have now been deleted.