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Windows7 Pro.

I have gotten a few mysterious directories on my PC. I initially suspected malware but after careful analysis I believe they are remnants of a failed patch/upgrade for the .Net framework.

What I am left with are 3 directories. They are named somewhat like a guid. They are owned by SYSTEM.

I have logged in with my administrator account and made sure applications are running as administrator. Through command shell, dos shell, explorer, I am not able to delete them.

Through explorer I am not able to modify the rights to the files in order to give Administrator the ability to remove them.

Does anyone know how to get rid of the pesky critters?

Sathyajith Bhat
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Development 4.0
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  • possible duplicate of [Some Windows System files cannot be deleted](http://superuser.com/questions/183147/some-windows-system-files-cannot-be-deleted) – mdpc Jul 24 '13 at 22:28
  • The other questions accepted resolution does not work for this case and my question explicitly said I had tried that solution already. – Development 4.0 Jul 24 '13 at 23:35
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    You can probably download and use PsExec to delete the directories. In a cmd prompt run "PsExec.exe -s cmd" then to verify you are running as System you can run "whoami". At this point you can use RMDIR to remove the directories hopefully. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx – Spencer5051 Jul 25 '13 at 01:08
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    Where are the locations of these files/folders? If they are owned by `SYSTEM` or `TRUSTEDINSTALLER`, it's best to leave them alone. –  Jul 25 '13 at 01:36

3 Answers3

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Being an Administrator means that you have the highest level of permissions granted by the operating system. System privileges however supercede you and generally are only accessible via the operating system directly.

In my experience System level folders are to be left alone. The folders you described sound like system and or chipset drivers. I do not recommend removing these folders.

Refer to this

Community
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Jason Bristol
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Try Process explorer and find out the folders are currently used by any process or not. then try unlocker to unlock the folder and then delete it, if it is not needed anymore.

Renju Chandran chingath
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I suggest you boot from a live linux (e.g. Knoppix) and delete the files, by doing so you can get around installing one-time-use software.

who.knows
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