Cant delete files in downloads because cant be found

After all your attempts to fix it, however, it is doubtful if your data can now be recovered. You are in way over your head with this technology. You need to recognize that, and get professional help when you need it.

I have used Revo Uninstaller for years, and love it. It is the only program I have used that finds Registry entries, and safely deletes them along with the program you no longer want.

The only issue I have right now with Revo is that it still seems to have issues in Windows You know you installed a program, but it is not showing up in Revo. I recently used Reset to clean a laptop that had become clogged with programs. I had inquired to several sites, about the windows 10 clean install.

Suppressing all accounts excepe for the administrator account is good, but could not be enough. The option to preserve or not is offered each time you delete any account. As the administrator account may content some personal information, an additional step may be needed : After deleting all regular accounts, create a brand new administrator account.

Log into that new account and suppress the original administrator account. Defragement and wipe the free space clean. I would delete everything except the windows folder. In the year , when I left the job I had under less than amiable circumstances, I deleted everything from the one hard drive, data and programs, except mspaint.

I then filled the entire drive with large. The only thing that could have remained was raw data of innocuous content, along with the file headers. I was not concerned with such residues as those. I never heard anything about the computer after that. Does anybody have reason to believe that technique does not work?

You may have gotten most of it wiped, but as the article states, there are a few places which you might have missed where residual data might have remained, for example the swap files and some files in App Data etc. Why does this site keep mentioning a windows install disk? I have given the usual speeches, but eventually gave up. Nobody wants to bother. I never told them it takes hours, they do not care.

Two computers are macs, so I know nothing about them. When that day comes, I may rub it in or not. If you are using Windows 7 or later, you can download the appropriate installation disc image for Windows the version corresponding to your current OS for free from Microsoft and burn it to a DVD or create a bootable installation USB flash drive.

It should register automatically if you have an eligible version installed. Searching Ask Leo! It takes about 30 seconds, has no cost, and I know that all the data is unrecoverable. All the platters are crushed. A low-tech solution is sometimes the best. Usually you got to press a couple of keys while booting up your system. Sometimes you can do a reset from within Windows. Then just remove my data and program drive If i wanted to remove all the data and programs I could format that drive then fill it with movies and then format it again or just leave it full of movies.

I tend not to sell or give away machines anyway. I think i still have my win3. Good article and bang on the button.

It takes approx… one hour to format a hard drive and install any version of windows. This is just what I needed. I upgraded to a new PC and sold my old one. I downloaded and ran DBAN.

My only minor complaint was that it took 15 hours to finish wiping a 1. The person who bought the computer had to wait until the next day to pick it up. Thank you, Leo! I have OEM Windows 10 fully updated. Could I just pick up on the suggestion made to use the Reset option within Windows 10? Microsoft recommend this if the clear all option is the selected all files and non original software plus all accounts are removed and one administration account is established if passing on or selling.

Is there still any concern about private data still residing somewhere which would need further action after the reset? Thanks Jonathan. Call me opinionated, but I consider this a simple truth. Inviting malware into your system then trying to block it with permissions at the last instant from changing the files it wants is not a reasonable approach.

Because users typically just mechanically "click through" to grant permission to whatever pops up. They don't want to be bothered, because the computer should protect itself and they want to keep doing whatever it is they're doing, not talk something over with the OS.

Boom, after that the malware is in. What did UAC do? Annoy, but not protect. Far, FAR better than using UAC is blocking parasite web sites with the MVPS hosts file, not allowing ActiveX to run from just any old web site on the wild internet, and back these things with a good anti-malware solution as a safety net.

But perhaps paramount to all this is to just practice responsible, intelligent computing practices. If you're doing things right you DON'T need UAC and you'll never see a notification from the anti-malware software having to block something bad. If I weren't living this dream myself I wouldn't say it. Never had an infection, never had a UAC prompt - because I turn that useless annoyance off.

What works for me is to run Windows Explorer as Administrator right-click and select "run as administrator" I am simply trying to edit a text file there, which I have edited recently, along with other files though there was an update recently?

I get this even when logged into the hidden admin account. You'll have to copy or move the file somewhere else to edit it.

You can't copy files to the root of C without providing the admin password. If you are a User with Administrator privileges, you are never prompted to give the password and then it fails. If you are a standard user, you can move a file to the root of C because it asks you for an Administrator password to do so. Or just right click the start button and select "Command Prompt Admin ". Where address is the location of the file you want to copy. Where filename. This thread was an excellent educational lesson for me!

Not only is my understanding of UAC's and related Permission settings deepened but I was also able to lift out a Read-Only file from a directory within the Win 7 Program Files x86 folder, edit it and then place it right back inside the originating folder. Best of all, doing so didn't harm the program whose file was edited. Chances are that I won't remember all the information contained in this valuable thread as until today, I had never needed to edit any file within the protected x86 folder.

Best is to store file somewhere else like under user profile or you could update the registry to allow access:. Actually, windows NTFS permissions combine to the least restrictive level of permissions, not the the most restrictive.

If you are a member of a group with write permissions and another group with read permissions and your account is given Full Control, you have effectively full control. Unless your account or a group you are a member is explicitly denied a right by clicking the Deny tick box -- Deny trumps everything. So this condition has been present since Windows 8 I see.

Wow, so many responses to find a work around too! Secure or not it is a big inconvenience to have a program error out and crash simply because Trusted Installer has all the power any my puny "User" account has been left homeless on the street so to speak. Apparently there really isn't a need to post a solution to this thread but I seen the conversation and thought I would add an additional way to take your Program Files folder back.

All without having to elevate this and that or log into the hidden account. It's the same old song and dance really. Take ownership of the entire directory structure at the root and make your currently signed in "User Name" the account with all the permissions. This may not be the best course of action on a multi-user system, with many accounts available to sign in with.

However, on a single user system it's the only way I know to make those folder areas work as they did in Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows. I'll use an imaginary folder called "Data" as the reference name to refer to the folder we'll be working with.

Of course you'll need to replace Data with your folder of choice. Next right click Data and select properties. You can do this on a per folder basis if taking over the whole Program Files directory is to scary for you. You'll see the Advanced button at the bottom of the properties dialog box, click that.

This will open the Advanced Security Settings for "Data". Low and behold there's lots of items listed. We won't bother those, that's how things get messed up. We're here to change owners of this folder, so click the blue link marked "Change".

Now an additional window appears, this is the user group entry form. In the object name box type your User Name, in my case it was Britton. Hit Ok and that windows goes away and you're back at the advanced settings windows, you should check on the box "Replace owner on subcontainers and contents" if that option appears.

Then click Ok and then click Ok again on the original properties box. You will get a nag screen as well asking are you sure, etc. Of course you are. Then immediately right click and select properties on "Data" again. You have to close and reopen the properties so that the ownership change takes effect.

We'll be going back in there to set the permission access levels this time, for your "User Name" group. This part is simple, on the properties page hit edit and a similar window appears on top of the other one. It looks the same for the most part but now that your the owner of "Data" you can check the boxes off.

I simply selected my name from the list and checked on the Full Control in the Permissions area at the bottom. Hit apply and then ok when the system is done applying the properties to all the files within the "Data" folder. That's it, you're now the proud owner of your data again. Repeat this process for any folder that causes you headaches down the road.

Now as for the duplicate entries in the permsision groups, I am not sure. I seen that to and was like WTH is all that for. Could you imagine telling an entire company of people "you may have to run Disk Cleanup before you delete a folder".

Friday, September 6, PM. Thank you! Works great. Saturday, January 11, PM. If only there was something that was viable for the enterprise Monday, January 13, AM. When will this problem be recognised by the powers at be.

Wednesday, February 12, PM. Microsoft, sort your game out! Monday, March 31, PM. Monday, April 21, AM. My own business network has this same problem.

My home network has this problem. Microsoft should be finding a resolution to this, not a bunch of work-arounds. Thursday, May 8, PM. Edited by rotech8 Wednesday, June 4, PM. Wednesday, June 4, PM. Worked system wide across my local and network drives. This is the Real solution! Tuesday, June 17, PM. I got a solution man to simple to do just unhide the file thumbs.

I tried it worked for me. Tuesday, July 8, PM. I just wish Microsoft would find a better solution For dealing with this! Friday, July 11, PM. This is one of the most important reply ever. Thank you so much!

You are so genius. Save my time a lot. Thursday, July 17, PM. Copy an image into the empty folder. Delete the folder. Monday, July 28, PM.

This was the correct fix that worked for me. Sunday, October 12, AM. Wednesday, October 15, PM. Good luck though on getting anyone from Microsoft to admit incompetence. They do no wrong! This is not a "minor" problem. Thursday, October 16, AM. This is still a major problem with windows 8. Has Microsoft abandoned the windows platform?

Is everyone over there using macs? Sunday, October 19, AM. If it's any consolation, this remains an issue in Windows 10 too ; I've just filed a feedback on it Saturday, October 25, PM. That's too bad that they haven't fixed it in Windows 10, but not surprising. Thanks for doing all of us a favor and submitting the feedback on it. More of us need to do the same thing.

I have a Windows 10 VM setup, so I will check it out as well. The trick that works for me is like this: 1 - You can't open the folder you are to exclude even if it's empty, because of the thumb file obvious 2 - Go to the left pane of Explorer and expand the folder above the one you are to exclude 3 - On the left pane, select with the left button of the mouse the folder to exclude 4 - If asked about excluding thumbs.

Thursday, November 13, PM. Instead I did this: 1 I opened the Recycling Bin folder 2 Dragged the folder into the open folder window 3 Selected Empty Recycling Bin And bingo it was gone, granted this isn't a total fix but dragging it into the Recycling Bin icon and the Recycling Bin Window aren't all too different and it works without changing any settings or anything drastic.

Proposed as answer by ghhgjhj Thursday, September 8, PM. Friday, December 12, AM. I had this same issue today, and tried Bardic's solution.

Worked like a charm! It only cleans WinSxS. Gabriel said on November 17, at am. John C. David Millians said on November 17, at pm. TelV said on November 19, at pm. Restart wuauserv and BITS again afterwards and then reboot the system.

Martin Brinkmann said on November 20, at pm. SusanB said on December 1, at am. I just did that and cleaned up over MB! Keith R. Starkey said on November 20, at pm. If so, how the heck can you clean this out without it doing that? Keith, only updates that have not been installed. Installed updates are left untouched. Starkey said on November 21, at pm.

GeneralGeorge said on November 20, at pm. I did this. There was less than 10meg in it. Crystal Olisa said on May 26, at am. David E Marshall said on June 1, at pm. Wow, thank you so much, used the.

Sterling Richardson said on September 10, at pm. Could I do this to clean up my server as well? Rodrigo Marques said on October 26, at am. JIm in Florida said on September 12, at pm. Hello All, I follow the process you shared and it delete the patch but when i click on check for updates under windows update in windows R2 wsus client or any other wsus client all the patch which i deleted came again.