How to delete Windows Files from a secondary hard drive? (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

I installed Windows Vista yesterday, accidentally doing so on my "D" drive
rather than my primary "C" drive.

After realizing my mistake, I simply did an image restore of my former XP OS
and reinstalled Vista on my primary "C" drive.

No problems except....

The Windows files from my initial accidental install are still on my "D"
drive and Windows will not let me delete them (although I am no longer
using them).

How I delete those WINDOWS and PROGRAM FILES folders left behind?

Thanks in advance!

 

[LewB]

Ron:

My guess is that the 'S' or 'System' attribute is set for those file and directories. Windows won't let you delete System files. You need to turn off the 'S' attribute.
Assuming nothing else is in your D: Drive, you can try opening a command prompt window and entering 'attrib -s d:*.*'
I might not have the syntax just right, check out http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Lew,

Easy to execute, however it returned DENIED ACCESS.

Need to find some other way to get rid of those files.

 

[LewB]

Ron:
That was my 1 shot. Other than to ask if the account you are logged into Windows has 'administrator' access.
If there is nothing else on there, maybe you can just re-format the drive ?

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Lew,

I do have ADMIN access.

Suggestion on best way to format the secondary drive through
Windows and/or without disturbing the main drive?

 

[LewB]

Go to 'My Computer' and right click on the D: drive. Format should be in the list of options. Or 'format d:' from a command prompt. Needless to say, be 100% sure about what drive you select before you start the formatting

 

[Bryan X]

Do you have 'User Account Control' turned off for your user account? Before I turned that off, the system denied me access to certain files.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Lew,

Clicking on the "D" drive and selecting FORMAT did the trick.

Thanks!

 

[Al.Anderson]

Reformating was probably your best bet anyway, as long as you didn't need other files on the drive.

But I'm curious - I think Vista upped the security aspect so that that you have to actually log on as 'Admin', not just have access. Did you do that?

(I'm interested because although I think it's great they are locking the system files; when I do eventually go to Vista I don't want to be locked out when I need to correct problems.)

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Al,

Yes, absolutely, you need to be logged on as an ADMIN
before you can make any major changes in Vista.

I love the fact that Vista has upgraded security in this
manner. I have a secondary computer that I share with
others in my household. I can now rest easy knowing that
no-one with secondary accounts can install or make any
changes to the system without me having to enter my password.

 

[Marko Berg]

Actually, that's how it works in Windows XP as well Ron.

 

[Al.Anderson]

Thanks Ron, yes, I think I'm goning to like Vista. (But I'm still going to wait for the 1st SP!)

They got a lot of grief from the virusware companies for locking down the "kernel" (not sure of the precise terminology and I'm too lazy to go check), but I think they did the right thing. Of course, there should be a way to get in as admin and override that.

As far as XP goes Marko, I really don't think that's true. I'm able to edit system32 and the registry without leaving my standard logon. Unix/Linux would force you to log in as root - much preferable.

 

[Al.Anderson]

I remembered this thread when I read this (from Yahoo/PCWorld):

Who's in Charge Around Here?

You might think you're the boss, if you're running Windows as an administrator. But when you try to run certain commands from Vista's command prompt, you'll learn that in Vista's eyes you're still a peon. Vista will say that you can't run the command because you don't have the proper administrator rights. Huh?

Fixable: Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and choose Run as Administrator. Finally, you'll be master of your domain.

The entire "worst of" article is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/1291...Y9aIyaUxDMWM0F