Cannot delete icons or folders on Windows desktop

By Windows Club | April 23rd, 2009 . Filed under: Tips. Tags: Desktop

If you are for some reason, unable to delete your desktop icons or folders in Windows 7, try one or more of the following:

1. Refresh the desktop and see if you can now delete them.

2. Boot in safe mode and try deleting them.

3. Go to the desktop folder/s and try deleting from there. The typical path is C:\Users\UserName\Desktop or C:\Users\Public\Desktop.

4. Use freeware Delete Doctor utility to lock and delete them on reboot.

5. If they are leftover icons after un-installing a program, install the program again, delete the desktop icons and then uninstall the program.

6. Open Regedit and navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace

Double click on NameSpace and check inside each of the GUID folders. If you are able to identify the icon by name, delete it. This is esp useful for deleting some un-deletable system icons.

7. Open cmd, use syntax RD /S /Q “pathname” where:
/S : Delete all files and subfolders in addition to the folder itself. Use this to remove an entire folder tree.
/Q : Quiet – do not display YN confirmation
Use these keys depending on your need.