I'm using Windows 10 and need to update a batch file to clear the contents of folder at "C:\Users\myUserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache". This is the folder that holds cache for Internet Explorer.
I would have thought the command was simply as follows:
DEL /S /F /Q C:\Users\myUserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\*
This command executes without issue, but when I look at the contents of the folder via Windows Explorer, it still has stuff in it. I say "stuff" because while it looks like a bunch of files, they don't behave like typical files. For instance, I cannot see these files when when I use "dir" on the command prompt no matter which flags I utilize. And when I examine the properties of these files, there is barely any information associated with them.
Why isn't my DEL command clearing out these files?
Screenshot of "files" still present in my INetCache folder
Screenshot of the properties of one of these files
I found that using the "rmdir" command instead of the "del" command resolved my issue.
rmdir "C:\Users\myUserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache" /s /q
open txt and save .bat file
DEL /S /F /Q C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\*
pause
I know the filename, say myfile.pdf. But I do not know its location because my web application created it temporarily. When the user disconnect from the application then I want this file to be deleted. So how to search and delete the file?
del path\filename /s
e.g.
del c:\test\h.bat /s
Will delete h.bat in any sub folders from the test directory.
To search and delete on an entire drive: -
del c:\test.bat /s
The S switch deletes all specified files from all subdirectories.
You can delete files by using this command.
rm [filename]
I am making a batch script and part of the script is trying to remove a directory and all of its sub-directories. I am getting an intermittent error about a sub-directory not being empty. I read one article about indexing being the culprit. I disabled WSearch but I eventually got the error again. Here's the command:
rmdir /S /Q "C:\<dir>\"
I experienced the same issues as Harry Johnston has mentioned. rmdir /s /q would complain that a directory was not empty even though /s is meant to do the emptying for you! I think it's a bug in Windows, personally.
My workaround is to del everything in the directory before deleting the directory itself:
del /f /s /q mydir 1>nul
rmdir /s /q mydir
(The 1>nul hides the standard output of del because otherwise, it lists every single file it deletes.)
I'm familiar with this problem. The simplest workaround is to conditionally repeat the operation. I've never seen it fail twice in a row - unless there actually is an open file or a permissions issue, obviously!
rd /s /q c:\deleteme
if exist c:\deleteme rd /s /q c:\deleteme
I just encountered the same problem and it had to do with some files being lost or corrupted. To correct the issue, just run check disk:
chkdsk /F e:
This can be run from the search windows box or from a cmd prompt. The /F fixes any issues it finds, like recovering the files. Once this finishes running, you can delete the files and folders like normal.
enter the Command Prompt as Admin and run
rmdir /s <FOLDER>
I had a similar problem, tried to delete an empty folder via windows explorer. Showed me the not empty error, so I thought I try it via admin cmd, but none of the answers here helped.
After I moved a file into the empty folder. I was able to delete the non empty folder
As #gfullam stated in a comment to #BoffinbraiN's answer, the <dir> you are deleting itself might not be the one which contains files: there might be subdirectories in <dir> that get a "The directory is not empty" message and the only solution then would be to recursively iterate over the directories, manually deleting all their containing files... I ended up deciding to use a port of rm from UNIX. rm.exe comes with Git Bash, MinGW, Cygwin, GnuWin32 and others. You just need to have its parent directory in your PATH and then execute as you would in a UNIX system.
Batch script example:
set PATH=C:\cygwin64\bin;%PATH%
rm -rf "C:\<dir>"
Im my case i just moved the folder to root directory like so.
move <source directory> c:\
And then ran the command to remove the directory
rmdir c:\<moved directory> /s /q
I had "C:\Users\User Name\OneDrive\Fonts", which was mklink'ed ( /D ) to "C:\Windows\Fonts", and I got the same problem. In my case
cd "C:\Users\User Name\OneDrive"
rd /s Fonts
Y (to confirm the action)
helped me. I hope, that it helps you too ;D
What worked for me is the following. I appears like the RMDir command will issue “The directory is not empty” nearly all the time...
:Cleanup_Temporary_Files_and_Folders
Erase /F /S /Q C:\MyDir
RMDir /S /Q C:\MyDir
If Exist C:\MyDir GoTo Cleanup_Temporary_Files_and_Folders
The reason rd /s refuses to delete certain files is most likely due to READONLY file attributes on files in the directory.
The proper way to fix this, is to make sure you reset the attributes on all files first:
attrib -r %directory% /s /d
rd /s %directory%
There could be others such as hidden or system files, so if you want to play it safe:
attrib -h -r -s %directory% /s /d
rd /s %directory%
Windows sometimes is "broken by design", so you need to create an empty folder, and then mirror the "broken folder" with an "empty folder" with backup mode.
robocopy - cmd copy utility
/copyall - copies everything
/mir deletes item if there is no such item in source a.k.a mirrors source with
destination
/b works around premissions shenanigans
Create en empty dir like this:
mkdir empty
overwrite broken folder with empty like this:
robocopy /copyall /mir /b empty broken
and then delete that folder
rd broken /s
rd empty /s
If this does not help, try restarting in "recovery mode with command prompt" by holding shift when clicking restart and trying to run these command again in recovery mode
one liner:
if exist folder rmdir /Q /S folder
I'm using this in a NPM script like so (Javascript) :
//package.json
"scripts": {
"start": "parcel --no-cache",
"clean": "if exist dist rmdir /Q /S dist",
"deploy": "npm run clean && parcel build --no-source-maps && firebase deploy"
},
Open CMD as administrator
chkdsk c: /F /R
Press the “Y” key if asked to check your disk the next time your system restarts.
Restart the machine. After that just delete the folder.
The easiest way I found to do this is:
rm -rf dir_name
it worked on zsh - macOS, it should work on windows cmd as well.
if you need to delete a folder on Windows with a batch file you will need to use PowerShell and this is how it is done:
rmdir .\directory_name\ -Recurse
Similar to Harry Johnston's answer, I loop until it works.
set dirPath=C:\temp\mytest
:removedir
if exist "%dirPath%" (
rd /s /q "%dirPath%"
goto removedir
)
Force delete the directory (if exists)
Delete.bat
set output_path="C:\Temp\MyFolder"
if exist %output_path% (
echo Deleting %output_path%
attrib -r /s /d %output_path%
rd /s /q %output_path%
)
I've fixed this before my making sure there wasn't extra whitespace in the name of the directory I was deleting. This is more of a concern when I had the directory name contained within a variable that I was passing to RD. If you're specifying your directly in quotes then this isn't helpful, but I hope that someone like me comes along with the same problem and sees this. RD /S /Q can work, as I noticed the issue started happening when I changed something in my batch script.
I can think of the following possible causes:
there are files or subdirectories which need higher permissions
there are files in use, not only by WSearch, but maybe by your virus scanner or anything else
For 1.) you can try runas /user:Administrator in order to get higher privileges or start the batch file as administrator via context menu. If that doesn't help, maybe even the administrator doesn't have the rights. Then you need to take over the ownership of the directory.
For 2.) download Process Explorer, click Find/Find handle or DLL... or press Ctrl+F, type the name of the directory and find out who uses it. Close the application which uses the directory, if possible.
I'm using this batch script to delete files
FORFILES /P "X:\test" /S /M *.bak /C "CMD /C DEL #path"
However, the X drive is a resource on an active/passive cluster. I have to run the batch file on both nodes. Two questions...
Is this the best method?
I want the batch to look for the X drive before deleting the files - do you know of a way? I don't want it to run on the passive cluster because the X drive won't be on it.
It would be much faster to simply use DEL instead of FORFILES. You can test if the root path exists using IF EXIST.
if exist "x:\test\*.bak" del /q /s "x:\test\*.bak"
I just trying copying a file to the folder. Then check to see if the file exists afterward. If it does, I delete the file, and then I can proceed.
I wish to delete a lot of files on windows quickly as possible.
Got any suggestions on how to do it (in batch script, windows command or ant script etc.)?
I was thinking of the following directions:
Parallel deletion. It apperats that when I delete a bunch of files it takes longer than deleting groups of these files parallely.
Any (quick!) way to make these files on creation time to "sit" closely on the disk?
Any optimizations in deletion, given that the deletion is permanat?
Any lazy mechanism windows has. That is, it doesn't really delete the files at that moment, but creates the effect that it did (you won't see it on the cmd.exe dir command or on the gui, and you could create a new file with a name that used to exist etc.) and windows will continue the real deletion in the background.
Any input will be extremely helpfull,
Thank you.
I find that the command line tends to be faster with file operations. For example, to delete C:\Parent\Folder\OldFolder, open the Command Prompt and type:
CD "C:\Parent\Folder"
Attrib -R -S -H "OldFolder\*.*" /S /D /L
RD /S /Q "OldFolder"
You could try using the commmand line as Hand-E-Food said. You can use these commands to delete files and remove folders.
del /f /s /q
rd /s /q
Or use wildcards to wipe all files out from a directory:
del C:\filestodel\*.* /f /s /q