How to force delete a file or folder in Windows 10

At some point in life, I needed to delete a folder and all of its files. But I wasn’t able to. The ordinary Delete key or Shift + Delete wouldn’t delete them. Not even when entering in “Command Prompt” – the error I was receiving was “The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.”

So, I decided to actually force deletion by entering “safe mode”.

1. Enter “safe mode”

In Windows 10, you can enter “safe mode” by:

1. Pressing the Windows key (or just by clicking the Start button).
2. Click the Power button.
   
3. Press and hold the Shift key.
4. Click Restart.
   

Now, your PC will restart/reboot and it will load in “safe mode”.

2. Enter “Command Prompt” in “safe mode”

1. Move with arrow keys to “Troubleshoot”.
   
2. Then to “Advanced options”.
   
3. Choose “Command Prompt”.
   
4. Choose your Windows user (in my case it’s “Neo”).
   
5. Fill your user’s password.
   
6. “Command Prompt” will show up.
   
   Inside “Command Prompt”, enter your desired partition/drive just by typing the letter of the drive. For example, in order to switch and enter the “E” partition/drive, you can just type E:. Once you’ve entered your partition/drive where you’ll want to delete the file/folder, you can:
   • use this command to force delete a file:
     del /f the_name_of_your_file
   • use this command to force delete a folder:
     rmdir /s the_name_of_your_folder
7. Close “Command Prompt”.
8. Choose “Exit and continue to Windows 10”.