How to Delete a Junction by Using Command Prompt in Windows 7

Question

I believe in Windows Vista, we could use linkd command. However, I cannot find this command in Windows 7. I know I can use Windows Explorer and delete the junction, but I wonder if this can be done in Command Prompt.

I can use mklink command to create a junction from a Command Prompt, so, what is the opposite of it (something like linkd)?

score 149 · Accepted Answer · edited May 14 '19 at 23:00

149

Delete junctions with rmdir (rd). Works in all Windows versions.

edited May 14 '19 at 23:00

Cristian Ciupitu

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answered May 19 '11 at 05:41

u1686_grawity

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@gravity, thanks! **rd** works while **del** does not. – Nord May 19 '11 at 05:45
Thanks :) This works fine. I didn't want to do it in Explorer as it may delete the target stuff too. – Adambean Aug 23 '13 at 14:40
For some reason this didn't work for me. I had to do the following in a console with administrator privileges first: fsutil reparsepoint delete C:\Path\To\Junction – Aaron Silverman Mar 27 '14 at 16:55
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This does not work in Powershell - it will follow the junction and delete all files. Use cmd /c "rmdir mydir". – Brian Low Sep 15 '14 at 06:00
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@BrianLow: Wat. – u1686_grawity Sep 15 '14 at 06:29
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@grawity Seems to for me: https://gist.github.com/brianlow/0d5d2070c87c378454d7 – Brian Low Sep 16 '14 at 01:46
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rmdir tells dir is not empty for junction – Sergey Oct 16 '18 at 16:34
when the linked directory is invalid `rd` returned an error but `del` worked – elig Apr 02 '20 at 09:21
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`rd` and `rmdir` are aliases to `Remove-Item` in PowerShell, so it's no wonder. [This](https://stackoverflow.com/a/44060418/476371) may be of relevance ... – 0xC0000022L Dec 02 '22 at 13:17

score 32 · Answer 2 · edited May 14 '19 at 23:06

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In my experience fsutil reparsepoint will take care of some cases where rmdir gives Access Denied.

fsutil reparsepoint delete <<PATH>>

edited May 14 '19 at 23:06

Cristian Ciupitu

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answered Oct 08 '14 at 00:23

Spig

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I had a junction point that was giving access denied if I used rmdir. Using this method, the junction point becomes a regular folder with read-only attribute. attrib -R and rmdir finally finished the job. – Codism Oct 28 '16 at 15:06
Absolute legend! was getting "Unspecified Error" or Access Denied" when attempting to delete a stale WindowsApps directory in explorer after much messing around with rmdir, del, and a few other attempts I realised a few contained directories were actually junctions despite having ownership, granting permissions, removing read only attribute, nothing wanted to remove them however your answer worked! Thank you :) – Brian Aug 26 '20 at 13:50
This works but it will leave the actual mount point dir behind, as an empty dir. The latter has to be deleted separately. – Fizz Feb 08 '22 at 05:52

score 13 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 02 '22 at 13:13

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Use the -d flag on junction (junction -d ...)

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/junction

edited Dec 02 '22 at 13:13

0xC0000022L

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answered Dec 18 '13 at 14:59

Jeff G

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You had to mention that `junction` is a separate utility that needs to be downloaded. – Damn Vegetables Nov 11 '20 at 17:21

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 15 '22 at 21:49

I ran into pretty severe issue where none of the above worked (fsutil or sysinternal junction command) because I had moved WindowsApps folder to different drive and then tried to use that drive on another computer. Once junctions don't have valid pointer, it seems they get impossible to be deleted. One thing that seems to worked was using WSL (type command bash) from elevated Windows terminal and then do sudo rm -rf \mnt\e\WindowsApps\. You can also try to turn off Gaming Services in Services if you keep getting Access Denied (alternatively, login to console at startup). Another useful app towards this task is LockHunter which allows to mark files to be deleted at startup.

score -1 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 18 '13 at 18:32

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linkd source /D

will delete the junction point (the link) without deleting on destination

edited Apr 18 '13 at 18:32

James Mertz

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answered Apr 18 '13 at 18:26

Nicolas

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Read the question. This command doesn't exist in Windows 7. – Aaronaught Nov 24 '13 at 17:27

How to Delete a Junction by Using Command Prompt in Windows 7

5 Answers5

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