Permission issue deleting folder

[agent154]

I can't confirm exactly which version number I'm running right now as I'm running an unused disk space wipe, but it's the latest version downloaded only a day or two ago.

I just wanted to ask about this even though it's not relevant to my situation anymore. It may come up in the future and may be a bug?

Running even as Administrator on Windows 7, there are some folders that refuse to delete. The files within the folder structure will be gone, but the folder generates an error saying invalid permissions. All that happens is that the name of the folder gets randomly changed to ascii text. I've even made sure that my user account is the owner of the folder tree and "Everyone" has full access to do whatever they please.

Note that this is not all folders in the tree even. Many will delete without fuss, but then some will just flat out not delete. I have to go in Explorer and delete the offending folder deep in the tree and run eraser again, which will then sometimes complete.

 

[DavidHB]

File permissions issues in Windows can be a real bugbear. And, contrary to many people's understanding (and indeed the way things used to be in XP and earlier), even administrator permission will not allow you access to certain files.

Let's try the simple things first. Did you stop the running process before you restarted Eraser as Administrator? As you were running a free space erase when you wrote, I'd guess that you did follow the correct procedure, but it is as well to ask.

Are the contents of the offending folders erased, in whole or in part? If they are, then Eraser has effectively done its job.

Can the offending folders be moved to the Recycle Bin? If they can, can the contents of the Recycle Bin be fully erased? If not, I suggest emptying the Recycle Bin, and doing a free space erase. In the worst case manually erasing or deleting the hidden system Recycle Bin folder (when running the relevant program as administrator, of course) may be necessary.

On a non-system drive, an easier approach may be to backup the data elsewhere, format the drive (or even remove and re-create the partition), and do a free space erase before restoring the data.

David