Can't delete folder - Windows requires Administrator permission

Hello! mibaup Welcome to the Ten Forums! There are a few ways to take care of any leftovers in areas otherwise managed by the System admin not the user admin account.

First you have to elevate the permissions as prompted or when possible take ownership over the files and folders you are trying to clear off left there in case you reinstall the same program again. Sometimes a program is removed and reinstalled in order to get it working.

Besides elevating permissions and taking ownership over something which automatically will elevate the user to see admin privileges you can even Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right Click Menu in Windows which is a slight additional entry placed into the system registry that works on 10 as well as XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1!

This one also comes in handy when you need to get rid of the Windows.old folder manually since you first have to dig down deep into sub folders of sub folder in order to change the attributes from "Read only" which is why you are not able to simply dump the folders there and then right click to uncheck the read only box and click apply when you have enough permissions in Windows. And this is precisely what you are running into!

The reg edit there is the easy for most without the need to follow the manual steps in order to take ownership over each folder one by one if you have a lot to clear off! In fact we have a tutorial guide for the same "registry hack" as the article there named it with a slightly different title for the same little reg mod. How to Add 'Take Ownership' to Context Menu in Windows 10


The other tutorial with different options as well as that there can be looked at
How to Change Owner of File, Folder, Drive, or Registry Key in Windows 10

Again once you have taken ownership over any file or folder in particular you will see a command prompt type window appear and watch as the lines of text appear and scroll quite fast indicating successes with taking ownership as this option goes to work.

There isn't any non system files you can't get rid of as long as the program they are for isn't running and keeping them active by accessing them. With a program already uninstalled it's a simple matter of taking ownership over them in order to uncheck the read only box which prevents you from simply tossing them into the Recycle Bin. I get rid of the Windows.old enough times by going deep first to change file attributes so what is deep gets dumped first before the main folder goes so you never end up with hidden files taking space other then protected system files. The guides there will see to it you have all the permissions you will need in order to zap everything left behind.

I will do two things first going into the properties>advanced to the owner tab there if any problem as far as the right click menu option not working. The explanation there was simple rather then going into any lengthy detail about Defender or something else hanging onto any one particular file for example. Once you take ownership of the Windows.old folder you can't simply delete that in one shot since there are too many sub folders and files still seeing the read only box checked off where you need to change the attributes and then go in a few layers of sub folders deep and start there to work outward nuking the subs under other subs first until you arrive at the root folder and first line of sub folder or simply let the Disk Cleanup tool handle that as well as other temp installation files and folders to clean up drive space.

Now with 10 unlike the depth seen with Vista onto 7 as far as that folder I took over the first line of subs and then when each of those disappeared simply nuked the top folder. It still takes some time obviously considering just what folder that is but was done is fewer steps. That was one improvement noticed so far in 10 besides now seeing an animated graph when transferring files that shows the megabyte per second speed for both file transfers or copying or removing files and folders. That can tell you when a drive is slowing up as well possibly from wear and tear.

Night Hawk said:

There isn't any non system files you can't get rid of as long as the program they are for isn't running and keeping them active by accessing them. With a program already uninstalled it's a simple matter of taking ownership over them in order to uncheck the read only box which prevents you from simply tossing them into the Recycle Bin. I get rid of the Windows.old enough times by going deep first to change file attributes so what is deep gets dumped first before the main folder goes so you never end up with hidden files taking space other then protected system files. The guides there will see to it you have all the permissions you will need in order to zap everything left behind.

I can confirm AveYo's account. I also had 3 files and 2 folders in the Windows.old folder that simply would not delete. Even after drilling down and 'taking ownership' multiple times.

What I ended up doing was booting from a live Linux CD and delete from there. This issue rarely happens but it does in fact sometimes happen.

YMMV.

~sent from Core's 'droid.

The program "Take Ownership" is getting old and not as efficient the day it was written.
I use the New and Improved version called "Grant Admin Full Control".

I have to use that often on my system(s) so it's one of the first programs I load, when setting up a new PC or a PC with a new OS.

As for getting rid of the "Windows.old" folder after a Win-10 upgrade, that can be done quite simply in the Disk Cleanup program that comes with every version of windows since.....well, a very long time.

I dump that worthless Windows.old folder on every system I set up.
Another elephant in the room is the Hiberfil.sys file created by "Hibernation". so I disable that beast too. No harm, no foul!

Cheers mates!


PS: I read somewhere, that if you just ignore that Windows.old folder, it will go away all by itself in just a few weeks. ???

TechnoMage said:

The program "Take Ownership" is getting old and not as efficient the day it was written.
I use the New and Improved version called "Grant Admin Full Control".

I have to use that often on my system(s) so it's one of the first programs I load, when setting up a new PC or a PC with a new OS.

As for getting rid of the "Windows.old" folder after a Win-10 upgrade, that can be done quite simply in the Disk Cleanup program that comes with every version of windows since.....well, a very long time.

I dump that worthless Windows.old folder on every system I set up.
Another elephant in the room is the Hiberfil.sys file created by "Hibernation". so I disable that beast too. No harm, no foul!

Cheers mates!


PS: I read somewhere, that if you just ignore that Windows.old folder, it will go away all by itself in just a few weeks. ???

Yes, Windows 10 will automatically remove it in a month. If you don't rollback to your previous system. Yes Disk Cleanup will get rid of it. Doing either is much less efficient than a simple right click>delete SHOULD be.

As for the 'Take Ownership', it's not a 'program' or an 'app', it's a simple registry edit. Can be implemented by importing the already written registry entry from a .reg file. No external programs or apps need. It's just turning on a built in Windows function, that is disabled by default.