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Can't delete folder in Windows 7

After 2 months of installing windows 7 and my applications i found a lot of useless folders in D:\ as in the below image and i can't delete them although they are empty

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Is there any way to delete such useless folders ??

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Amr Badawy
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  • why closing my question ... there isn't any answer for question i found ??? Could nay of Mepher or Palavuzlar clarify ?? – Amr Badawy Nov 08 '10 at 02:38

1 Answers1

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That folders are leftovers of the installation of MS products, usually Windows updates. They are the temporal folders used by the installer.

Warning: There is a small possibility that deleting that folders could break something in Windows.

Usually they can be deleted without problems from Windows Explorer, but from time to time it seems that something fails in the installation and Windows keeps a reference to the temporal folder. The most extreme case I have seen was in my girlfriend computer when Windows (XP) was loading a driver from the temporal folder itself instead of from the system folder (so I couldn't get rid of it).

If you are decided to delete that folders, you can use use Process Explorer to find what references are hold to the folders and remove them:

  1. Go to Find > Find handle or DLL and type the name of one of those folders, it would list the process that are using it (technically that have an open handle on them).
  2. Double click in the first result, it would highlight the reference (open handle) in the main window.
  3. Right click and select Close handle.
  4. Repeat the process if there are more references to the folder.

After this you should be able to delete that folder.

Alberto Martinez
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  • I used this tool but no results match folder name ... is there any suggestions ? – Amr Badawy Nov 07 '10 at 08:57
  • In that case maybe is a permissions problem. Do you use a Home edition of Windows 7? If not, check what are the permissions in that folders, even administrators can't delete folders if they don't have permissions on them. – Alberto Martinez Nov 07 '10 at 22:06
  • Thanks Alberto , but what type of permission i need to delete these folders ? and how can i assign it to me ? – Amr Badawy Nov 08 '10 at 02:40
  • You need at least write/delete permissions, but it would be better grant full control to your user. You may need to take ownership of the file (there is a tab for setting the owner), since some times the problem is that the folder was created under a system account (like Local System). – Alberto Martinez Nov 08 '10 at 15:44
  • @Alberto , thanx for your patient with me , i already take ownership of the folder by my user but i still also can't delete the folder :( – Amr Badawy Nov 09 '10 at 20:11
  • And you added your user to the permission list after that? Note that your user or the group it belongs to needs to be in list of explicit permissions (taking ownership just allow to you change permissions, but doesn't grant full control by itself). – Alberto Martinez Nov 10 '10 at 21:24