With a click on “Unlock Selected Process” you can separate them from the file and delete them afterwards. In the Lockhunter that opens you can see a list of the processes that are responsible for the deletion lock. Then click on the file or folder you want to delete and select “What is locking this file?” from the context menu. Method 3: Delete file/folder with Lockhunterįirst you install the freeware Lockhunter, which you can download here. If you still can’t delete the file or folder, the last method below will help you. To make the change permanent, you have to close this window as well by clicking “OK” or “Apply”. In the main window you can now see your account as “the owner of the file”. If you have a Microsoft account connected to Windows 10, this is the corresponding email address, otherwise just your normal user-name. There, just enter your user name in the white box. If you have administrator rights, you can click on “Change” on the right and set yourself as the owner.Ī dialog box will pops up. The owner of the file is shown at the top.

In the properties dialog that appears, switch to the “Security”-tab and click on “Advanced”. To do this, start by right-clicking on the file or folder and selecting “Properties”. As administrator you can set yourself as the owner which is called “taking ownership” in IT-lingo. Some files/folders cannot be deleted by you as a user because another user is marked as owner. If someone else is managing your system as an administrator, you will need to contact them. If your user account does not have administrator rights, you will need to log in with an appropriate admin account.

The most common reason why you cannot delete a file is lack of user rights on the system. Method 1: Delete file/folder as administrator

With the following 3 methods you can still get rid of such files or folders. In some cases such files remain “marked” as open / “in-use” or you simply do not have the user-rights to delete them. This might be quite annoying if you definitely don’t need the affected files/folders anymore, like in the case of files that had been used or created by an already uninstalled or removed software.

$recycle.bin folder delete