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Same experience here.
I had a laptop with a 2 TB hard disk having four partitions C, D, E, F, 500 GB each with C: having the Win OS. Now, that laptop fell and broke, but luckily nothing happened to the hard disk. I put a cover to this 2 TB hard disk with a USB outlet; essentially making it an external hard drive.
It doesn't allow me to delete the Windows folder on that external drive. Same story with Program Files, Program Data.
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It took quite a bit of time and patience, but taking ownership of files/folders, I managed to get rid of everything (Program Files, ProgramData) except for a number of Windows subfolders. Some of them just will NOT let me take over. I'll probably just move the VMs folder to another disk and reformat the disk altogether. And merge the boot partition with it, while I'm at it.
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just move the vms to another temp ssd/hdd .. format the old ssd copy it back.. save you trouble
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers β progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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That's the way I'd do it - and probably a repartition to dump any bootable stuff as well.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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diskpart
list disk
select disk #
clean
gpt
exit
Software Zen: delete this;
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Yeah, that's exactly what I said I wanted to avoid, but in the end, would've been quicker...
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yep, exactly what I would do....
Charlie Gilley
βThey who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.β BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Get in trouble shooting windows when booting and remove the folders in CMD
Or boot up from a external medium (Hiren's Boot, Bart PE...) and remove the folders from the virtual OS
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Yup, I knew about both takeown and icacls (and its predecessor cacls), but there are some (deeply embedded) folders that still don't like to be reassigned. That response on superuser.com might be using a combination of command-line args that I haven't tried - thanks for that.
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Yep, the method linked is the 'correct'/'best' method...
Takeown and then icalcs
Rod
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Maybe SSD's are "small" so you don't keep anything except the OS on them. I'm in awe when a product lets me install on the drive I choose.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Wut?
This SSD is 2TB. It hosted both an OS (Windows 10) and Hyper-V VMs. Since each VM hosts its own OS, it makes sense to put VMs on SSD and not bulk storage disks like spinning disks.
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I too got tired of this problem and wrote a little cmd line tool for this..
GitHub - windojitsu/OwnAndResetAcl: Reclaim ownership and control of a directory tree.[^]
OwnAndResetAcl
A sanity-saving tool for dealing with those pesky "Windows.old" directories
Reclaim ownership and control of a directory tree.
Recursively takes ownership and resets the ACLs of files, directories and symbolic links.
Does NOT follow reparse-points (symlinks or junctions).
DOES reclaim ownership and restore access to symlinks and junctions.
DOES support traversing/accessing long pathnames.
DOES include hidden/system files and directories, and empty directories.
DOES NOT modify timestamp or attributes of any files/directories.
USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION: Everything in and under the target directory will be owned by the 'Builtin\Administrators' group, and have a DACL which explicitly grants Everyone full-control.
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Y'know...I had actually given some thought to writing a utility or script to do exactly this, but I figured it ought to get more complex than I might have anticipated from the get-go.
Thank you very much for the link, I'll be sure to check it out as soon as time permits.
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yeah there's a lot of advice out there "just run takeown.exe and icacls.exe" but at some point, Windows.old directory structures started containing pathnames > 260 chars, and directory symlinks that loop back on themselves.. it's maddening!
further maddening, the .NET interop to call Advapi32 to enable necessary admin permissions, was extremely non-intuitive.. lots of old, bad code out there that works on x86 but not on x64 due to differences in struct-packing (member alignment)
lmk if it helps or fails in any way.. haven't tested it on Win11, yet
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Quick follow-up:
I just had a quick look at the source - this is excellent stuff, my hat's off to you for putting this together. You can bet I'll be using it to clear off whatever remains on my drive.
They say necessity is the mother of invention, so I think I know exactly what you went through to convince yourself to take the time to create this project. It's short(-ish), to-the-point, and despite the technical complexities involved, is very well structured and elegant code. How do I vote a 5 on GitHub? 
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2021 .. I credit pandemic-boredom. 
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I get that. 
Yet it's the sort of thing that, when you need it - it's incredibly valuable.
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#Worldle #626 1/6 (100%)
π©π©π©π©π©π
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
modified 9-Oct-23 20:57pm.
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I'm using my SVG engine to accomplish advanced draws in my graphics library, so basically I am creating a way to build basic SVGs rather than simply parse them from XML.
My rendering engine (because it is primarily for SVG) supports skewing, scaling, rotation, multi-step gradients, stroke line dashes and caps, and a mess of other stuff. These styles can be applied to any drawing element. Trouble is making it easy to use. If you just want to draw an ellipse there's an awful lot of information as above that goes with it.
I've looked at how other libraries accomplish things like this, and I don't like it.
And yet I can't think of a better way than what's been done already, by libraries like LVGL.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm still largely in the design phase after making some foundational code preparation for the feature adds.
Analysis paralysis is pretty frustrating. I feel like I'm getting in my own way, and if I just got my mind right I could unstick myself but here I am.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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My guess is that other libraries have already gone through this, arriving at ways that you don't like, because they couldn't think of anything better either. Then again, there's a lot of crap code out there... 
When I'm unsure about a design, I just start to code, let the code speak to me, and refactor accordingly. Since you're doing a library, putting together examples of how to use it could help to keep its interface minimal yet versatile.
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I keep "tossing" techniques that worked in the past thinking I can do it "in my head".
The fact is, most people can't keep track of more than 7 things at one time: that includes the names of their kids; if they have 7 or more.
Going back to "drawing pictures" always puts me back on track.
e.g. my serializer: object-> serializer -> xml -> byte array -> memory stream -> compressed stream -> file stream -> saved file.
Saved file -> file stream -> compressed stream -> etc.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: The fact is, most people can't keep track of more than 7 things at one time: that includes the names of their kids; if they have 7 or more.
My son thought his name was Jesus Christ until he was older.
Jesus Christ in or out.
etc.......
I don't think before I open my mouth, I like to be as surprised a everyone else.
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.3.0 JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: SimpleWizardUpdate
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You got two kids, Bill and Russell?
Iβve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
Iβm begging you for the benefit of everyone, donβt be STUPID.
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