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After the restart, press 4 or F4 to boot the system into Safe Mode. From the available options, go for Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart. Go to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery and click the ‘Get Started’ button under Advance Startup. From ‘Advanced Boot options’ select Safe Mode by using arrow key and hit ‘Enter’. Immediately start pressing ‘F8’ key on the keyboard until you see the ‘Advanced Boot Options’ screen. Shutdown your system and then press power button to turn it on. If this doesn’t work, boot into ‘Safe Mode’ in Windows by following these steps: After reboot, open File Explorer and browse the file or folder location. When you shut down the system, these processes stop. It’s possible that the file or folder location might be in use by a software or essential Windows programs in the background. If you have also come across a similar situation, you can forcibly delete and get rid of these undeletable files and folders either manually or by using a software.įirst, try a reboot. These files can vary from a few bytes to sometimes gigabytes.
This could be frustrating when you are struggling to free up some space and a few troublesome files stop you from proceeding. The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable.The source or file destination is in use.Some frequent errors that appear in Windows when trying to delete undeletable or locked files are: In few cases, the file can’t be removed or deleted as it is being used by another application or essential program. This can be caused by a virus, malware, spyware, adware, Trojan horse, or corrupt/damaged system files and permissions that locks the files, thereby making them undeletable. Despite having admin privileges in Windows, users sometimes face this issue where they are not able to delete some files or folders. It’s important to keep your system clean from junk or irrelevant files occupying unnecessary space on the drive.