Every day we create new files and folders in Windows due to our responsibilities, and it is useful to carry a much more correct order of items to use. It's normal everything happens to us that we are filled with hundreds of files or folders that are no longer needed and this results in a set of items that take up unnecessary space and can become a mess. But sometimes the file is not deleted for some reason due to permissions or configuration.
Can’t Delete a File in Windows 10?
You have the right to freely delete those user-defined, which are usually located on the local drive D. When cleaning directories on the system drive C you must be as careful as possible because of the risk of deleting files important for the operation of the system. Removing folders required by the operating system can crash or crash your computer and cause your computer to shut down prematurely.
Just because system files cannot be deleted. The operating system will issue various messages, for example, it will ask for administrator's permission,.
If you insist to delete the file or want to force to delete it, you may try these two methods in this post to unlock and delete the file.
Need to mention that this post is not talking about deleting Windows system files. Windows system files are usually protected against deletion.
Deleting system files can cause issues of your Windows 10 computer OS. So please do not delete system files randomly.
If the file is corrupted or your Windows 10 computer reports that it can’t find the file, you may take some measures to conduct the disk repair process to see if it can fix this error and fix corrupted system files.
How to Force Delete a File That Cannot Be Deleted Windows 10
How to delete a file that that cannot be deleted in Windows 10? Normally you can take the basic steps below at first.
Close all apps and programs on your Windows 10 computer, and try to delete the file again to see if it can be deleted.
Close File Explorer. You can click Start -> Type Task Manager and choose Task Manager to open it -> Find Windows Explorer and right-click on it and choose End task to close it.
Restarting Windows 10 can sometimes fix many issues. You can try to reboot your Windows 10 computer and delete the file again to see if it can be deleted successfully.
You can also conduct a virus scan to see if there is a virus in your Windows 10 computer.
If all the four measures above don’t make any difference, then you can continue to try the two ways below to delete files or folders that cannot be deleted.
Method 1. Delete Files/Folders Using CMD
You can try to use Command Prompt to delete files that cannot be deleted in Windows 10.
Step 1. You can press Windows + R keys on the keyboard, type cmd, and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to run Windows Command Prompt as administrator.
Step 2. Then input the command line and hit Enter to force delete the file in Windows 10 with CMD. The command line is like this: del c:\users\alisa\desktop\test.txt. Replace “c:\users\alisa\desktop\test.txt” with the path of the target file.
Method 2. Use Safe Mode to Unlock and Delete Files
To delete a file that won’t be deleted, you can also try to start Windows 10 in safe mode to unlock and delete the file.
Step 1. Click Start -> Settings -> Update & Security -> Recovery -> Restart now (under Advanced Startup), to enter into Windows recovery environment.
Step 2. Click Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> Startup Settings -> Restart.
Step 3. In Startup Settings window, you can press F4 or F5 to boot into safe mode in Windows 10.
Step 4. Delete the file or folder in Windows 10 Safe Mode.
Step 5. Restart Windows 10 and your computer will auto exit Safe Mode.
How to Recover Mistakenly Deleted Files from Windows 10 Computer
As for how to force delete a file, how to delete files that cannot be deleted or how to delete locked files in Windows 10, hope the above solutions in this post help.
In case sometimes you may mistakenly deleted a needed file on your Windows 10 computer, here we also attach an easy file undelete method, namely, use the professional data recovery software to easily recover deleted files from your Windows 10 computer.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is an easy data recovery program for Windows. It allows you to easily recover deleted/lost files from Windows 10 computer, external hard drive, SSD, USB flash drive, SD card,. in 2 simple steps. You can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover data under various data loss situations.
Step 1. Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery, and choose This PC from the left pane. Then you can choose the specific partition in the right window where your deleted files located. Click Scan button.
If you want to scan and recover specific type of files, you can click Settings to choose the file type before you click Scan button.
Step 2. After the scan process is completed, you can check the scan result to find your mistakenly deleted files, check them and click Save button to set a new destination path to store them.
In Conclusion
We may not want these folders or files to be completely deleted, but we prefer them to be moved to a different location or copied. In this way, we will not lose all this information, but simply move it from the place to order our desk.
As you can see, there are different options for can't delete file or folder in Windows 10.
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