Trying to delete files

[City Builder]

Hello,

I am the only user on my computer and my account is an administrator account. I am running Windows Vista 64 bit, Home premium edition.

I'll try to be brief as I can. Here is what happend and what I am attempting to do.

1. I created a new partition and installed Windows 7.

2. Later on I found out the partition was too small, so I used Acronis program to backup the partition and then I made the parition larger (had to do this because the free space was to the left of the Windows 7 partition). I then used Acronis to restore the backup of the partition it had made to the new larger partition.

3. Unfortunately, that partition was no longer bootable.

4. I took all the files and folders in there and created a new folder named Windows.001, I then put all the files and folders that werer restored on the parition into that Windows.001 folder.

5. I reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch and everyting went fine and it boots and runs great.

However, I've now got that Windows.001 folder that my computer won't let me delete. When I try to delete that folder, the computer gives me a message telling me that "You need permission to perform this".

I am the only administrator account, so why would I not have permission to delete stuff off my own computer, but more importantly, how do I go about actually deletign this old stuff to free up some still much needed space?

Thanks

[Boris]

Have you tried deleting in Safe Mode ?

[City Builder]

No, no I haven't. I guess I should.

However, this kind of thing seems to popup rather regularly for me and my computers, where I wish to delete one of the files that either I placed personally, or I placed through the installation of a program. I would think that the OS would see that I own the file and allow me to do whatever I want to do with it since I was the administrator logged in at the time that I placed it.

Is there another way to do this besides rebooting into safe mode? Some way of setting permissions on files and folders so that I am never bothered by this blockage ever again?

Thanks

[City Builder]

Okay, I booted into safe mode but still can't remove the old files that should no longer be associated with anything.

The specific message that I get (which I should have written down the first time) are:

You need permission to perform this action.

You require permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to this folder.

Windows

Date Created 4/22/2009 12:16AM

Anybody got a clue what to do?

I also tried to delete the folder as well as individual files in them inside of an elevated command prompt (Administrator command prompt) but it just tells me access is denied.

Thanks

[Boris]

Try this ? :-

http://www.vista4beginners.com/Change-perm...-take-ownership

Otherwise boot from a Linux Live CD - which should enable you to remove the Windows files you want to.

[City Builder]

Yeah, funny you should suggest that. I just literally a few moments ago stumbled across the idea of taking ownership of the files and folders and did so one just one of the files (that before would not delete), so I took ownership of it, and then was able to delete it. I was just coming back here to say how to do this in case anybody else might pull up this page in a search engine when they are having the same issue.

Kudos to you.

This should surely save me a lot of aggravation in the future now that I know what to do about orphaned files (leftover files that have TrustedInstaller as the commander and chief).

Thanks.

[Hb_Kai]

Try this:

Unlocker Assistant

Even though it displays the application information on the given website, what it does it when you attempt to delete a file which is being used by another program or other resources, it displays a window with the name of the resource that is using it. This will then ask you if you would like to kill the task or "unlock" it so you are able to delete it.

I've used it for a long time now and love it. It comes with XP Pro' installations but it should be okay for use for Vista.

--- Just checked and it can be used on Vista.

I should probably note something else. This application must be active at the time of deleting files or it won't do any good. Having it run at start up is probably best and it doesn't make any other change to your PC's performance, maybe with Vista though... who knows?

[City Builder]

SOLVED.

For some reason after switching ownership of all the files and folders to my account name it still wouldn't allow me to delete the files, but once I switched ownership to Administrator then I was able to go in and delete all the files.

Files are now gone and it's returned the 20+GB of space to the partition.

Thanks for the help everybody.