How to Force Delete Stubborn Files in Windows: A Step-by-Step Guide

 

Have you ever tried deleting a file in Windows only to see an "Access Denied" error? This usually happens when a file is locked by another process or lacks the necessary permissions for deletion. Recently, I encountered this issue while trying to delete a .war file from OneDrive, even after uninstalling OneDrive. In this guide, I'll share the step-by-step process I used to successfully remove the locked file.

takeown /f "C:\Users\username\OneDrive\fileorfolder" /A /R /D Y

icacls "C:\Users\username\OneDrive\fileorfolder" /grant vmadmin:F /T /C /Q

icacls "C:\Users\username\OneDrive\fileorfolder" /reset /T /C /Q

Then you can delete:

Remove-Item "C:\Users\username\fileorfolder" -Force