The XMEN Clan Forums

Ok, I have a secondary HD in my computer... I want most of what's on it. However, it used to be the primary HD of my old computer... so it still has the windows directory taking up more than a gig. In the good old days of windows you could simply delete it... now you need permissions. So, I go and change all the permissions and everything seems like it should be fine. Then I get some 2000+ messages of "Access Denied"! So I check, and sure enough the permissions didn't change on a whole bunch of files. I go to the security tab and give myself full permissions, click OK... and "Access Denied"!

How can I delete this whole directory w/o having to format the drive? (Running Vista 64)


.... Maybe I could slap in a 3rd HD & do a linux install.......

If you just want to mess with your filesystem in Linux, you can use a bootable live CD. Runs the OS off the CD and doesn't touch your drive unless you tell it to.

Did you do an upgrade or a clean install of Vista? I don't know much about Vista, but in older versions of windows if you did an upgrade there would sometimes be files left over in the old system directories that it used/locked.

Or, it's possible that Vista just won't let you delete files if the "system" flag is set on them. Find a file you can't delete, and get its properties. Assuming you're admin, there should be a way to see/set the "hidden" and "system" file flags, so try clearing them and then delete the file.

BR, you may want to move the stuff you want to save onto another drive then format the thing.. That will save you all kinds of heartaches in the long run I think..