Colin's Weekly Tip: Delete Whatever You Want

[Colin]

When it comes to my PC I like my files and folders nicely organized. A messy 'Program Files' directory or weird folders in the root directory of my hard drive are not going to cut it. Windows though, protects certain files and folders from deletion. I know I don't need them, and they're not loaded into memory, but Windows still refuses to let me delete!

There's a registry tweak that can bypass this little problem of course. First load up regedit (Start -> Run then type regedit and press the ok button) and follow this path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Microsoft -> WindowsNT -> Current Version -> Winlogon. >From there find the SFCDisable binary value and enter this hexadecimal value FFFFFF9D (decimal value = 4294967197), after that's done save and reboot your PC.

Now you'll be able to delete whatever file you want on your PC and you won't have to hear Windows complain about it. = ) A warning though, this tweak is intended for the more experienced computer user who knows which files are important, and which are not! if you delete the wrong file, it's possible you can destroy the OS, which would require a reinstallation!

[Nova]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE i love it, how do you figure all this stuff out colin? its a paradox to me :)

[Colin]

Hehe... Hey that's my secret! ;)

[CHE]

I told him.

[CHE]

;) LOL j/k

[shez]

Excellent tip one i will be using..Thanx.

[PCgeek]

Yeah I will be using this one too :) Colin is a genius lol, even though he never admits it, thats y I like him :)

[Ryu]

I used that once to delete a file. But now, I need to delete a undeletable file again ... and it doesn't work anymore. Wtf?!

Btw I'm sorry for bumping up this topic, but I really need to get that file deleted. ~~

[zima]

i tried what u had suggested and had no luck i am trying to get lsass off of my desk top but won't let me keeps saying in use and have even tryed disabling anything with that name on it in services still no luck maybe u can help thanx

[lakota]

I have had similar problems trying to delete files that always say they are in use. The simplest solution is booting into Safe Mode and trying to delete the file. (Press F8 while windows is starting up, chose Safe Mode from the menu).

The other solution that I have tried is booting from another OS. Either from CD or actually slaving the drive with the problem file into another PC. Then navigating to the file and deleteing it. When boot from CD, I use Console recovery mode or, if I'm feel a tad more creative, my Knoppix CD. In theory you could boot from floppy, but you would need one that can read NTFS partitions if that's how you have your drive partitioned. Sysinternals provides a free utility for that, but I haven't played with it enough to get it to work.