Comments on: Vista Permissions?

Question: Vista Permissions?

heavenstobetsy — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:06:58 -0800

What the crap? Vista won't let me delete a folder extracted from a .rar file. K. I hate wasting my weekly question on this!

But.

I pulled a folder (two subfolders about 2.5 GB total) onto my Desktop from a .rar file. Now I'm trying to delete that whole folder and receiving a "Destination Folder Access Denied" error. I'm an Administrator. I have ownership of the folder I'm trying to delete + Full Control permissions-wise. Am I missing something here?

I've googled this for about an hour. All I can find is similar issues with copying shared files between workstations.

By: azlondon

azlondon — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:22:27 -0800

have you a windows explorer in that directory? could the rar extraction application or some other app. still have the directory (or a file in that directory) open?

If you can't work out what is prohibiting the deletion, you could always try rebooting and the re-deleting the file.

By: jesirose

jesirose — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:31:28 -0800

Just a random guess, but is your recycling bin very large? Try doing shift+delete, which bypasses the bin. Sounds like a big folder, so it's getting stuck on the size?

By: heavenstobetsy

heavenstobetsy — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:31:30 -0800

Tried rebooting. Same issue. I dunno. Guess I'm going to have Season 2 of The Hills on my Desktop forever.

By: dhammond

dhammond — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:32:51 -0800

When this type of thing happens to me, I usually wait until I restart the computer to delete it. This usually works fine, but when it doesn't I'll use a local FTP program to delete the file. It's never failed me yet.

By: jmd82

jmd82 — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:41:49 -0800

I have yet to use Vista, but can you boot in Safe Mode as in XP? Booting in Safe Mode has done the trick for me in the past.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:48:38 -0800

Can you delete a single file in the folder?

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:14:45 -0800

Try turning off UAC then deleting it. I had this problem whenever I tried to delete anything in the C: drive using cubic explorer until I turned off User Annoyed Constantly.

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:15:35 -0800

Hah. I'm the first person on the internet to call it that.

By: davejay

davejay — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:28:05 -0800

Hah. I'm the first person on the internet to call it that.

Better snap up that domain name!

By: heavenstobetsy

heavenstobetsy — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:34:02 -0800

I can't delete a single file inside, no.

I have UAC off. It was the first thing I did when I got this PC. What a terrible idea.

By: Bonzai

Bonzai — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:34:12 -0800

Guess I'm going to have Season 2 of The Hills on my Desktop forever

The Gods are punishing you. One, stealing the copyrights. Two, admitting you watch The Hills.

Seriously though, as someone who has watched a few TV series this way, make sure your bittorrent client isn't still trying to upload it as this will cause failure.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:36:21 -0800

Dunno about Vista, but this would be a sure kill in XP. Copy the following lines, paste them into Notepad, and save them as kill-folder.cmd:



cacls "%~1" /t /g %username%:F

attrib -r -h -s "%~1"

attrib -r -h -s "%~1\*.*" /s

rmdir /s "%~1"

pause

Drag the folder you want to kill, and drop it on kill-folder.cmd's icon. Should do the job.

By: heavenstobetsy

heavenstobetsy — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:36:29 -0800

Good point. Karma coming back to me.

Azureus is no longer in play though.

Safe Mode = no for some reason as well!

I'm stumped.

By: Bonzai

Bonzai — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:46:41 -0800

Even though your userid is an administrator try logging in with the actual administrator id.

By: Crotalus

Crotalus — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:27:12 -0800

Boot with a live Linux Distro like Puppy Linux. Find the folder and delete it. You're done.

By: darksasami

darksasami — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:42:09 -0800

Crotalus has it. Knoppix would work, as would Puppy Linux.

And if that doesn't do it, start backing up your data if you can, because that hard drive is gonna blow.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:15:01 -0800

On XP, I've always used WhoLockMe to figure out what was going on when that happened (occasionally). Not sure with Vista, but it might be worth a try.

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:13:07 -0800

Are you sure it is actually extracted, or is it still in the .rar file just looking like it's extracted? Can you delete the .rar file?

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:59:28 -0800

The only reason you wouldn't be able to delete a file is if you either don't have permission, or the file is locked. Since this is your own computer, I'm guessing the permission issue isn't.

That means a file lock. A file can be locked for several reasons, but they all basically come down to this: Windows thinks a program is already using the file. You need to find and kill that program. If your download client is still open, the file is locked. If you're even viewing the file in some programs (file explorers, for example, though this happens a lot more on Linux boxen than Windows), the file can be locked.

Or, your recycle bin could just be "full." What that means is, there's no extra space on your system to not delete the file (files in the trash are still valid files, according to Windows, until you empty the trash). Empty your recycle bin and watch the Gigs come flying back.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:35:37 -0800

Additionally, it's very strange that the file would remain locked after rebooting. The only instance I can think of where that might happen is if you installed a program that's now starting up every time the system is booted, and that program in turn is "holding" the file/folder. It doesn't just have to be in your Start menu... look in your Registry or at your running Services.

By: bkeene12

bkeene12 — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:55:56 -0800

I think that Civil Disobedient is on to something. No telling what might of been in that file.

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:20:18 -0800

Get process explorer from the ms site and start killing off every process you see with the exception of explorer (this means killing dwm too). After you've killed everything you can without making it impossible to use, delete the file. I've had this same problem a couple of times, but I don't remember how I fixed it other than UAC. It's not malware, it's just an annoying bug somewhere in vista.

By: blag

blag — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:23:22 -0800

Wasn't there a bug in XP where a malformed divx .avi file would become undeletable? Seem to remember that something like shmedia.dll would try to read the file, hang and keep it locked. Perhaps that bug is also present in Vista.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:49:12 -0800

If that's what's going on, it's probably caused by Explorer trying to make thumbnails for you. You should be able to stop it from doing that by turning on List or Details view on the folders concerned, instead of Thumbnail or Filmstrip view, then logging off and on again.

I've not used Vista, so I don't know whether it shows folders on the desktop in thumbnail view by default; but it does sound like the kind of thing Microsoft probably would do in relentless pursuit of compulsory eye candy. I don't know of a way to change the desktop's view mode, so using a Linux live CD to do what you want is probably your best option.

If it were me, I'd use the same live CD to kick Vista in the head and install Ubuntu; it's less troublesome by far :-)

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 03:03:55 -0800

IronLizard, "User Annoyed Constantly" is just brilliant and deserves a shot at becoming a meme. Well done.

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 05:08:42 -0800

Hey cool, thanks flabdablet!

Did you get it deleted heavenstobetsy? If not, try using this utility.