Deleting folders on Windows 8

[JSR]

I don't know if this is specific to Windows 8, or if it's just another modern Windows quirk, but why am I unable to delete folders off my external hard drive?

Each time I try, I get an "Interrupted Action" error, detailing an "unexpected error" with "Error 0x80004005: Unspecified error". I am then unable to delete the folder(s).

Properties seems to think the folder is Read-Only - it shouldn't be, because it never was. If I uncheck the Read-Only, Windows goes through the motions of performing this task but, when I check Properties afterwards, it's still Read-Only.

What on Earth is going on?

[Barr1e]

Re: Deleting folders on Windows 8

I know this relates to Win 7, hopefully it might help.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...f-18556f6c6dbc


Regards. Barr1e

[JSR]

Re: Deleting folders on Windows 8

Hi Barrie

Thanks for that. After some time of bumbling around, I discovered that "solution" myself. I hadn't seen a "security" tab in my previous version of Windows. I tried to do everything in there, ensuring the Administrator had the correct "rights", but nothing helped. I stumbled into the solution of adding myself as a user, and giving myself full control (I wouldn't have thought it necessary because I thought that was the whole point of being "Administrator"?).

The daft thing is that I was deleting folders just fine before, and I was able to rename them just fine even after I couldn't delete them. It was like Windows arbitrarily decided to create a random user and assign control of all folders on that drive to this new user. Like everything else with Windows 8, it does these things without bothering to tell you - leaving the user blindly stumbling around trying to figure out how to do something that should be perfectly simple.

Got to love modern Windows...

Anyway, thanks for posting the link and confirming that I'd stumbled across the right solution.

J