How to remove Program Files folder from HDD?

Question

System administration

Hello!
I have such a problem. The laptop died, I decided to remove the hard drive from it and use it (I connect it to a new laptop through the "pocket"). A lot of space was taken up by the Program Files folder from the HDD. I want to delete it, but it is not deleted anywhere: the message "There is no access to the folder. You need permission to perform this operation. Request permission from "Administrators" to change this Program Files (x86) folder."

I tried to use some programs like Total Commander, I tried to set up admin rights for all sorts of articles on the Internet, but nothing helps. Can you tell me how to delete this folder? Thank you in advance.

PS: I do not consider the option to format the hard drive, because it stores important files for me.

Answer 1

All wrong.
- Unloker does not work on win7 and older
- Becoming the owner is not enough, recursively changing the rights of Windows from the windows is not able, even the administrator will be - request rights from the trusted installer or some other blizzard ... you need to deal with the console for a month ...
The current version is LiveCD -like assemblies on flash drives that run on SYSTEM.
Or the RunAsTI utility - which gives rights above the admin - yes, in Windows there are at least SYSTEM and TrastedInstaller rights, which are higher ...

Answer 2

Become its owner (Properties -> Security -> Advanced) and delete it.

Answer 3

Assign yourself the owner of this folder and the files in it, then delete.
Another option is to boot into Linux and delete, Linux ignores NTFS permissions.

Answer 4

I tried to set up admin rights for all sorts of articles

Make yourself the owner of the folder:
security - advanced - owner - change - select yourself - check "Replace owner of subcontainers and objects" - apply.

Answer 5

Take ownership of the folder and apply to all nested objects. Delete in safety all and add yourself and put "full access". Everything. There can be no other obstacles.
Ah, I'm lying. Maybe! Broken file system or volume structure (usually Windows explicitly swears at this, well, sometimes it can also be in the system log). And even a surface defect that fell on the element in the FS. It happens that files are somewhere with broken names or invalid characters, or something else. It is repaired either by chkdsk, or (in severe cases) by recreating the volume (that is, with the loss of all data).
If the data is important, in any case, you NEED to make a copy to another medium, and without any problems, clear the entire disk and create a new empty partition. Throw data back. At the same time and defragmentation after all :)

Answer 6

There is such a small utility - Unlocker is called ( latest version 1.9.2 ). It works "from under the admin" and deletes any folder or file, no matter how tightly they are blocked by access.
And this method is faster than dealing with each individual deletion, how to become the owner there.