Cannot delete directory with Directory Delete path true

Question

I m using  NET 3 5  trying to recursively delete a directory using   Directory Delete myPath  true     My understanding is that this should throw if files are in use or there is a permissions problem  but otherwise it should delete the directory and all of its contents   However  I occasionally get this   System IO IOException  The directory is not empty      at System IO   Error WinIOError Int32 errorCode  String maybeFullPath      at System IO Directory DeleteHelper String fullPath  String userPath  Boolean recursive      at System IO Directory Delete String fullPath  String userPath  Boolean recursive            I m not surprised that the method sometimes throws  but I m surprised to get this particular message when recursive is true    I know the directory is not empty    Is there a reason I d see this instead of AccessViolationException

User · Answer

I resolved one possible instance of the stated problem when methods were async and coded like this:

// delete any existing update content folder for this update
if (await fileHelper.DirectoryExistsAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath))
       await fileHelper.DeleteDirectoryAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath);

With this:

bool exists = false;                
if (await fileHelper.DirectoryExistsAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath))
    exists = true;

// delete any existing update content folder for this update
if (exists)
    await fileHelper.DeleteDirectoryAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath);

Conclusion? There is some asynchronous aspect of getting rid of the handle used to check existence that Microsoft has not been able to speak to. It's as if the asynchronous method inside an if statement has the if statement acting like a using statement.

User · Answer

I ve had this same problem with Windows Workflow Foundation on a build server with TFS2012  Internally  the workflow called Directory Delete   with the recursive flag set to true  It appears to be network related in our case    We were deleting a binary drop folder on a network share before re-creating and re-populating it with the latest binaries  Every other build would fail  When opening the drop folder after a failed build  the folder was empty  which indicates that every aspect of the Directory Delete   call was successful except for deleting the actually directory   The problem appears to be caused by the asynchronous nature of network file communications  The build server told the file server to delete all of the files and the file server reported that it had  even though it wasn t completely finished  Then the build server requested that the directory be deleted and the file server rejected the request because it hadn t completely finished deleting the files   Two possible solutions in our case    Build up the recursive deletion in our own code with delays and verifications between each step Retry up to X times after an IOException  giving a delay before trying again   The latter method is quick and dirty but seems to do the trick

User · Answer

The directory or a file in it is locked and cannot be deleted  Find the culprit who locks it and see if you can eliminate it

User · Answer

I had the very same problem under Delphi  And the end result was that my own application was locking the directory I wanted to delete  Somehow the directory got locked when I was writing to it  some temporary files    The catch 22 was  I made a simple change directory to it s parent before deleting it

User · Answer

Non of above solutions worked well for me  I ended up by using an edited version of  ryascl solution as below            lt summary gt          Depth-first recursive delete  with handling for descendant          directories open in Windows Explorer           lt  summary gt      public static void DeleteDirectory string path                foreach  string directory in Directory GetDirectories path                         Thread Sleep 1               DeleteDir directory                     DeleteDir path              private static void DeleteDir string dir                try                       Thread Sleep 1               Directory Delete dir  true                     catch  IOException                        DeleteDir dir                     catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                        DeleteDir dir

User · Answer

As mentioned above the  accepted  solution fails on reparse points - yet people still mark it up        There s a much shorter solution that properly replicates the functionality   public static void rmdir string target  bool recursive        string tfilename   Path GetDirectoryName target             target Contains Path DirectorySeparatorChar ToString      Path DirectorySeparatorChar ToString     string Empty            Path GetRandomFileName        Directory Move target  tfilename       Directory Delete tfilename  recursive       I know  doesn t handle the permissions cases mentioned later  but for all intents and purposes FAR BETTER provides the expected functionality of the original stock Directory Delete   - and with a lot less code too   You can safely carry on processing because the old dir will be out of the way     even if not gone because the  file system is still catching up   or whatever excuse MS gave for providing a broken function    As a benefit  if you know your target directory is large deep and don t want to wait  or bother with exceptions  the last line can be replaced with       ThreadPool QueueUserWorkItem  o    gt    Directory Delete tfilename  recursive         You are still safe to carry on working

User · Answer

in case of network files  Directory DeleteHelper recursive  true  might cause IOException which caused by the delay of deleting file

User · Answer

I had a those weird permission problems deleting User Profile directories  in C  Documents and Settings  despite being able to do so in the Explorer shell   File SetAttributes target dir  FileAttributes Normal   Directory Delete target dir  false     It makes no sense to me what a  file  operation does on a directory  but I know that it works and that s enough for me

User · Answer

You can reproduce the error by running   Directory CreateDirectory   C  Temp a b c     Process Start   C  Temp a b c     Thread Sleep 1000   Directory Delete   C  Temp a b c    Directory Delete   C  Temp a b    Directory Delete   C  Temp a      When trying to delete directory  b   it throws the IOException  The directory is not empty   That s stupid since we just deleted the directory  c    From my understanding  the explanation is that directory  c  is stamped as deleted  But the delete is not yet commited in the system  The system has reply the job is done  while in fact  it is still processing  The system probably wait the file explorer has focus on the parent directory to commit the delete    If you look on the source code of the Delete function  http   referencesource microsoft com  mscorlib system io directory cs  you will see it uses the native  Win32Native RemoveDirectory function  This do-not-wait behavior is noted here       The RemoveDirectory function marks a directory for deletion on close  Therefore  the directory is not removed until the last handle to the directory is closed     http   msdn microsoft com en-us library windows desktop aa365488 v vs 85  aspx   Sleep and retry is the solution  Cf the ryascl s solution

User · Answer

Is it possible you have a race condition where another thread or process is adding files to the directory   The sequence would be   Deleter process A    Empty the directory Delete the  now empty  directory    If someone else adds a file between 1  amp  2  then maybe 2 would throw the exception listed

User · Answer

add true in the second param   Directory Delete path  true     It will  remove all

User · Answer

This error occurs if any file or directory is considered in-use  It is a misleading error  Check to see if you have any explorer windows or command-line windows open to any directory in the tree  or a program that is using a file in that tree

User · Answer

I had the very same problem under Delphi  And the end result was that my own application was locking the directory I wanted to delete  Somehow the directory got locked when I was writing to it  some temporary files    The catch 22 was  I made a simple change directory to it s parent before deleting it

User · Answer

If you are trying to recursively delete directory a and directory a b is open in Explorer  b will be deleted but you will get the error  directory is not empty  for a even though it is empty when you go and look  The current directory of any application  including Explorer  retains a handle to the directory  When you call Directory Delete true   it deletes from bottom up  b  then a  If b is open in Explorer  Explorer will detect the deletion of b  change directory upwards cd    and clean up open handles  Since the file system operates asynchronously  the Directory Delete operation fails due to conflicts with Explorer   Incomplete solution  I originally posted the following solution  with the idea of interrupting the current thread to allow Explorer time to release the directory handle       incomplete  try       Directory Delete path  true     catch  IOException        Thread Sleep 0       Directory Delete path  true       But this only works if the open directory is the immediate child of the directory you are deleting  If a b c d is open in Explorer and you use this on a  this technique will fail after deleting d and c   A somewhat better solution  This method will handle deletion of a deep directory structure even if one of the lower-level directories is open in Explorer        lt summary gt      Depth-first recursive delete  with handling for descendant      directories open in Windows Explorer       lt  summary gt  public static void DeleteDirectory string path        foreach  string directory in Directory GetDirectories path                 DeleteDirectory directory              try               Directory Delete path  true             catch  IOException                 Directory Delete path  true             catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                Directory Delete path  true             Despite the extra work of recursing on our own  we still have to handle the UnauthorizedAccessException that can occur along the way  It s not clear whether the first deletion attempt is paving the way for the second  successful one  or if it s merely the timing delay introduced by the throwing catching an exception that allows the file system to catch up   You might be able to reduce the number of exceptions thrown and caught under typical conditions by adding a Thread Sleep 0  at the beginning of the try block  Additionally  there is a risk that under heavy system load  you could fly through both of the Directory Delete attempts and fail  Consider this solution a starting point for more robust recursive deletion   General answer  This solution only addresses the peculiarities of interacting with Windows Explorer  If you want a rock-solid delete operation  one thing to keep in mind is that anything  virus scanner  whatever  could have an open handle to what you are trying to delete  at any time  So you have to try again later  How much later  and how many times you try  depends on how important it is that the object be deleted  As MSDN indicates       Robust file iteration code must take into account many complexities   of the file system    This innocent statement  supplied with only a link to the NTFS reference documentation  ought to make your hairs stand up    Edit  A lot  This answer originally only had the first  incomplete solution

User · Answer

This is because of  FileChangesNotifications   It happens since ASP NET 2 0  When you delete some folder within an app  it gets restarted  You can see it yourself  using  ASP NET Health Monitoring   Just add this code to your web config configuration system web    lt healthMonitoring enabled  true  gt     lt rules gt       lt add name  MyAppLogEvents  eventName  Application Lifetime Events  provider  EventLogProvider  profile  Critical   gt     lt  rules gt   lt  healthMonitoring gt     After that check out Windows Log - gt  Application   What is going on     When you delete folder  if there is any sub-folder  Delete path  true  deletes sub-folder first  It is enough for FileChangesMonitor to know about removal and shut down your app  Meanwhile your main directory is not deleted yet  This is the event from Log         Delete   didn t finish its work and because app is shutting down  it raises an exception       When you do not have any subfolders in a folder that you are deleting  Delete   just deletes all files and that folder  app is getting restarted too  but you don t get any exceptions  because app restart doesn t interrupt anything  But still  you lose all in-process sessions  app doesn t response to requests when restarting  etc   What now   There are some workarounds and tweaks to disable this behaviour  Directory Junction  Turning Off FCN with Registry  Stopping FileChangesMonitor using Reflection  since there is no exposed method   but they all don t seem to be right  because FCN is there for a reason  It is looking after structure of your app  which is not structure of your data  Short answer is  place folders you want to delete outside of your app  FileChangesMonitor will get no notifications and your app will not be restarted every time  You will get no exceptions  To get them visible from the web there are two ways    Make a controller that handles incoming calls and then serves files back by reading from  folder outside an app  outside wwwroot   If your project is big and performance is most important  set up separate small and fast webserver for serving static content  Thus you will leave to IIS his specific job  It could be on the same machine  mongoose for Windows  or another machine  nginx for Linux   Good news is you don t have to pay extra microsoft license to set up static content server on linux    Hope this helps

User · Answer

If your application s  or any other application s  current directory is the one you re trying to delete  it will not be an access violation error but a directory is not empty  Make sure it s not your own application by changing the current directory  also  make sure the directory is not open in some other program  e g  Word  excel  Total Commander  etc    Most programs will cd to the directory of the last file opened  which would cause that

User · Answer

I had this problem today   It was happening because I had windows explorer open to the directory that was trying to be deleted  causing the recursive call the fail and thus the IOException   Make sure there are no handles open to the directory   Also  MSDN is clear that you don t have to write your own recusion  http   msdn microsoft com en-us library fxeahc5f aspx

User · Answer

Editor s note  Although this answer contains some useful information  it is factually incorrect about the workings of Directory Delete  Please read the comments for this answer  and other answers to this question     I ran into this problem before   The root of the problem is that this function does not delete files that are within the directory structure  So what you ll need to do is create a function that deletes all the files within the directory structure then all the directories before removing the directory itself  I know this goes against the second parameter but it s a much safer approach  In addition  you will probably want to remove READ-ONLY access attributes from the files right before you delete them  Otherwise that will raise an exception   Just slap this code into your project   public static void DeleteDirectory string target dir        string   files   Directory GetFiles target dir       string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir        foreach  string file in files                File SetAttributes file  FileAttributes Normal           File Delete file              foreach  string dir in dirs                DeleteDirectory dir              Directory Delete target dir  false       Also  for me I personally add a restriction on areas of the machine that are allowed to be deleted because do you want someone to call this function on C  WINDOWS   WinDir   or C

User · Answer

If you are trying to recursively delete directory a and directory a b is open in Explorer  b will be deleted but you will get the error  directory is not empty  for a even though it is empty when you go and look  The current directory of any application  including Explorer  retains a handle to the directory  When you call Directory Delete true   it deletes from bottom up  b  then a  If b is open in Explorer  Explorer will detect the deletion of b  change directory upwards cd    and clean up open handles  Since the file system operates asynchronously  the Directory Delete operation fails due to conflicts with Explorer   Incomplete solution  I originally posted the following solution  with the idea of interrupting the current thread to allow Explorer time to release the directory handle       incomplete  try       Directory Delete path  true     catch  IOException        Thread Sleep 0       Directory Delete path  true       But this only works if the open directory is the immediate child of the directory you are deleting  If a b c d is open in Explorer and you use this on a  this technique will fail after deleting d and c   A somewhat better solution  This method will handle deletion of a deep directory structure even if one of the lower-level directories is open in Explorer        lt summary gt      Depth-first recursive delete  with handling for descendant      directories open in Windows Explorer       lt  summary gt  public static void DeleteDirectory string path        foreach  string directory in Directory GetDirectories path                 DeleteDirectory directory              try               Directory Delete path  true             catch  IOException                 Directory Delete path  true             catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                Directory Delete path  true             Despite the extra work of recursing on our own  we still have to handle the UnauthorizedAccessException that can occur along the way  It s not clear whether the first deletion attempt is paving the way for the second  successful one  or if it s merely the timing delay introduced by the throwing catching an exception that allows the file system to catch up   You might be able to reduce the number of exceptions thrown and caught under typical conditions by adding a Thread Sleep 0  at the beginning of the try block  Additionally  there is a risk that under heavy system load  you could fly through both of the Directory Delete attempts and fail  Consider this solution a starting point for more robust recursive deletion   General answer  This solution only addresses the peculiarities of interacting with Windows Explorer  If you want a rock-solid delete operation  one thing to keep in mind is that anything  virus scanner  whatever  could have an open handle to what you are trying to delete  at any time  So you have to try again later  How much later  and how many times you try  depends on how important it is that the object be deleted  As MSDN indicates       Robust file iteration code must take into account many complexities   of the file system    This innocent statement  supplied with only a link to the NTFS reference documentation  ought to make your hairs stand up    Edit  A lot  This answer originally only had the first  incomplete solution

User · Answer

You don t have to create and extra method for recursivity or delete files inside folder extra  This all doing automatically by calling      DirectoryInfo Delete      Details is here   Something like this works quite good     var directoryInfo   new DirectoryInfo  My directory path           Delete all files from app data directory       foreach  var subDirectory in directoryInfo GetDirectories                    subDirectory Delete true     true set recursive paramter  when it is true delete sub file and sub folder with files too         passing true as variable to delete method  will delete sub files and sub folder with files too

User · Answer

Before going further  check for the following reasons that are under your control    Is the folder set as a current directory of your process  If yes  change it to something else first  Have you opened a file  or loaded a DLL  from that folder   and forgot to close unload it    Otherwise  check for the following legitimate reasons outside of your control    There are files marked as read-only in that folder  You don t have a deletion permission to some of those files  The file or subfolder is open in Explorer or another app    If any of the above is the problem  you should understand why it happens before trying to improve your deletion code  Should your app be deleting read-only or inaccessible files  Who marked them that way  and why   Once you have ruled out the above reasons  there s still a possibility of spurious failures  The deletion will fail if anyone holds a handle to any of the files or folders being deleted  and there are many reasons why someone may be enumerating the folder or reading its files    search indexers anti-viruses backup software   The general approach to deal with spurious failures is to try multiple times  pausing between the attempts  You obviously don t want to keep trying forever  so you should give up after a certain number of attempts and either throw an exception or ignore the error  Like this   private static void DeleteRecursivelyWithMagicDust string destinationDir        const int magicDust   10      for  var gnomes   1  gnomes  lt   magicDust  gnomes              try               Directory Delete destinationDir  true             catch  DirectoryNotFoundException                return      good            catch  IOException       System IO IOException  The directory is not empty             System Diagnostics Debug WriteLine  Gnomes prevent deletion of  0   Applying magic dust  attempt   1     destinationDir  gnomes                   see http   stackoverflow com questions 329355 cannot-delete-directory-with-directory-deletepath-true for more magic             Thread Sleep 50               continue                    return               depending on your use case  consider throwing an exception here     In my opinion  a helper like that should be used for all deletions because spurious failures are always possible  However  YOU SHOULD ADAPT THIS CODE TO YOUR USE CASE  not just blindly copy it   I had spurious failures for an internal data folder generated by my app  located under  LocalAppData   so my analysis goes like this    The folder is controlled solely by my application  and the user has no valid reason to go and mark things as read-only or inaccessible inside that folder  so I don t try to handle that case  There s no valuable user-created stuff in there  so there s no risk of forcefully deleting something by mistake  Being an internal data folder  I don t expect it to be open in explorer  at least I don t feel the need to specifically handle the case  i e  I m fine handling that case via support   If all attempts fail  I choose to ignore the error  Worst case  the app fails to unpack some newer resources  crashes and prompts the user to contact support  which is acceptable to me as long as it does not happen often  Or  if the app does not crash  it will leave some old data behind  which again is acceptable to me  I choose to limit retries to 500ms  50   10   This is an arbitrary threshold which works in practice  I wanted the threshold to be short enough so that users wouldn t kill the app  thinking that it has stopped responding  On the other hand  half a second is plenty of time for the offender to finish processing my folder  Judging from other SO answers which sometimes find even Sleep 0  to be acceptable  very few users will ever experience more than a single retry  I retry every 50ms  which is another arbitrary number  I feel that if a file is being processed  indexed  checked  when I try to delete it  50ms is about the right time to expect the processing to be completed in my case  Also  50ms is small enough to not result in a noticeable slowdown  again  Sleep 0  seems to be enough in many cases  so we don t want to delay too much  The code retries on any IO exceptions  I don t normally expect any exceptions accessing  LocalAppData   so I chose simplicity and accepted the risk of a 500ms delay in case a legitimate exception happens  I also didn t want to figure out a way to detect the exact exception that I want to retry on

User · Answer

Is it possible you have a race condition where another thread or process is adding files to the directory   The sequence would be   Deleter process A    Empty the directory Delete the  now empty  directory    If someone else adds a file between 1  amp  2  then maybe 2 would throw the exception listed

User · Answer

Editor s note  Although this answer contains some useful information  it is factually incorrect about the workings of Directory Delete  Please read the comments for this answer  and other answers to this question     I ran into this problem before   The root of the problem is that this function does not delete files that are within the directory structure  So what you ll need to do is create a function that deletes all the files within the directory structure then all the directories before removing the directory itself  I know this goes against the second parameter but it s a much safer approach  In addition  you will probably want to remove READ-ONLY access attributes from the files right before you delete them  Otherwise that will raise an exception   Just slap this code into your project   public static void DeleteDirectory string target dir        string   files   Directory GetFiles target dir       string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir        foreach  string file in files                File SetAttributes file  FileAttributes Normal           File Delete file              foreach  string dir in dirs                DeleteDirectory dir              Directory Delete target dir  false       Also  for me I personally add a restriction on areas of the machine that are allowed to be deleted because do you want someone to call this function on C  WINDOWS   WinDir   or C

User · Answer

None of the above answers worked for me  It appears that my own app s usage of DirectoryInfo on the target directory was causing it to remain locked   Forcing garbage collection appeared to resolve the issue  but not right away  A few attempts to delete where required   Note the Directory Exists as it can disappear after an exception  I don t know why the delete for me was delayed  Windows 7 SP1           for  int attempts   0  attempts  lt  10  attempts                          try                               if  Directory Exists folder                                         Directory Delete folder  true                                     return                            catch  IOException e                                GC Collect                    Thread Sleep 1000                                    throw new Exception  Failed to remove folder

User · Answer

I resolved one possible instance of the stated problem when methods were async and coded like this:

// delete any existing update content folder for this update
if (await fileHelper.DirectoryExistsAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath))
       await fileHelper.DeleteDirectoryAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath);

With this:

bool exists = false;                
if (await fileHelper.DirectoryExistsAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath))
    exists = true;

// delete any existing update content folder for this update
if (exists)
    await fileHelper.DeleteDirectoryAsync(currentUpdateFolderPath);

Conclusion? There is some asynchronous aspect of getting rid of the handle used to check existence that Microsoft has not been able to speak to. It's as if the asynchronous method inside an if statement has the if statement acting like a using statement.

User · Answer

This problem can appear on Windows when there are files in a directory  or in any subdirectory  which path length is greater than 260 symbols   In such cases you need to delete       C  mydir instead of C  mydir  About the 260 symbols limit you can read here

User · Answer

The directory or a file in it is locked and cannot be deleted  Find the culprit who locks it and see if you can eliminate it

User · Answer

None of the above answers worked for me  It appears that my own app s usage of DirectoryInfo on the target directory was causing it to remain locked   Forcing garbage collection appeared to resolve the issue  but not right away  A few attempts to delete where required   Note the Directory Exists as it can disappear after an exception  I don t know why the delete for me was delayed  Windows 7 SP1           for  int attempts   0  attempts  lt  10  attempts                          try                               if  Directory Exists folder                                         Directory Delete folder  true                                     return                            catch  IOException e                                GC Collect                    Thread Sleep 1000                                    throw new Exception  Failed to remove folder

User · Answer

Non of above solutions worked well for me  I ended up by using an edited version of  ryascl solution as below            lt summary gt          Depth-first recursive delete  with handling for descendant          directories open in Windows Explorer           lt  summary gt      public static void DeleteDirectory string path                foreach  string directory in Directory GetDirectories path                         Thread Sleep 1               DeleteDir directory                     DeleteDir path              private static void DeleteDir string dir                try                       Thread Sleep 1               Directory Delete dir  true                     catch  IOException                        DeleteDir dir                     catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                        DeleteDir dir

User · Answer

Recursive directory deletion that does not delete files is certainly unexpected  My fix for that   public class IOUtils       public static void DeleteDirectory string directory                Directory GetFiles directory       SearchOption AllDirectories  ForEach File Delete           Directory Delete directory  true             I experienced cases where this helped  but generally  Directory Delete deletes files inside directories upon recursive deletion  as documented in msdn   From time to time I encounter this irregular behavior also as a user of Windows Explorer  Sometimes I cannot delete a folder  it think the nonsensical message is  access denied   but when I drill down and delete lower items I can then delete the upper items as well  So I guess the code above deals with an OS anomaly - not with a base class library issue

User · Answer

As mentioned above the  accepted  solution fails on reparse points - yet people still mark it up        There s a much shorter solution that properly replicates the functionality   public static void rmdir string target  bool recursive        string tfilename   Path GetDirectoryName target             target Contains Path DirectorySeparatorChar ToString      Path DirectorySeparatorChar ToString     string Empty            Path GetRandomFileName        Directory Move target  tfilename       Directory Delete tfilename  recursive       I know  doesn t handle the permissions cases mentioned later  but for all intents and purposes FAR BETTER provides the expected functionality of the original stock Directory Delete   - and with a lot less code too   You can safely carry on processing because the old dir will be out of the way     even if not gone because the  file system is still catching up   or whatever excuse MS gave for providing a broken function    As a benefit  if you know your target directory is large deep and don t want to wait  or bother with exceptions  the last line can be replaced with       ThreadPool QueueUserWorkItem  o    gt    Directory Delete tfilename  recursive         You are still safe to carry on working

User · Answer

The directory or a file in it is locked and cannot be deleted  Find the culprit who locks it and see if you can eliminate it

User · Answer

The directory or a file in it is locked and cannot be deleted  Find the culprit who locks it and see if you can eliminate it

User · Answer

I had a those weird permission problems deleting User Profile directories  in C  Documents and Settings  despite being able to do so in the Explorer shell   File SetAttributes target dir  FileAttributes Normal   Directory Delete target dir  false     It makes no sense to me what a  file  operation does on a directory  but I know that it works and that s enough for me

User · Answer

You can reproduce the error by running   Directory CreateDirectory   C  Temp a b c     Process Start   C  Temp a b c     Thread Sleep 1000   Directory Delete   C  Temp a b c    Directory Delete   C  Temp a b    Directory Delete   C  Temp a      When trying to delete directory  b   it throws the IOException  The directory is not empty   That s stupid since we just deleted the directory  c    From my understanding  the explanation is that directory  c  is stamped as deleted  But the delete is not yet commited in the system  The system has reply the job is done  while in fact  it is still processing  The system probably wait the file explorer has focus on the parent directory to commit the delete    If you look on the source code of the Delete function  http   referencesource microsoft com  mscorlib system io directory cs  you will see it uses the native  Win32Native RemoveDirectory function  This do-not-wait behavior is noted here       The RemoveDirectory function marks a directory for deletion on close  Therefore  the directory is not removed until the last handle to the directory is closed     http   msdn microsoft com en-us library windows desktop aa365488 v vs 85  aspx   Sleep and retry is the solution  Cf the ryascl s solution

User · Answer

Editor s note  Although this answer contains some useful information  it is factually incorrect about the workings of Directory Delete  Please read the comments for this answer  and other answers to this question     I ran into this problem before   The root of the problem is that this function does not delete files that are within the directory structure  So what you ll need to do is create a function that deletes all the files within the directory structure then all the directories before removing the directory itself  I know this goes against the second parameter but it s a much safer approach  In addition  you will probably want to remove READ-ONLY access attributes from the files right before you delete them  Otherwise that will raise an exception   Just slap this code into your project   public static void DeleteDirectory string target dir        string   files   Directory GetFiles target dir       string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir        foreach  string file in files                File SetAttributes file  FileAttributes Normal           File Delete file              foreach  string dir in dirs                DeleteDirectory dir              Directory Delete target dir  false       Also  for me I personally add a restriction on areas of the machine that are allowed to be deleted because do you want someone to call this function on C  WINDOWS   WinDir   or C

User · Answer

I m surprised that no one thought of this simple non-recursive method  which can delete directories containing read only files  without needing to change read only attribute of each of them    Process Start  cmd exe     c       rmdir  s q C  Test TestDirectoryContainingReadOnlyFiles        Change a bit to not to fire a cmd window momentarily  which is available all over the internet

User · Answer

You don t have to create and extra method for recursivity or delete files inside folder extra  This all doing automatically by calling      DirectoryInfo Delete      Details is here   Something like this works quite good     var directoryInfo   new DirectoryInfo  My directory path           Delete all files from app data directory       foreach  var subDirectory in directoryInfo GetDirectories                    subDirectory Delete true     true set recursive paramter  when it is true delete sub file and sub folder with files too         passing true as variable to delete method  will delete sub files and sub folder with files too

User · Answer

It appears that having the path or subfolder selected in Windows Explorer is enough to block a single execution of Directory Delete path  true   throwing an IOException as described above and dying instead of booting Windows Explorer out to a parent folder and proceding as expected

User · Answer

I have spent few hours to solve this problem and other exceptions with deleting the directory  This is my solution   public static void DeleteDirectory string target dir                DeleteDirectoryFiles target dir           while  Directory Exists target dir                         lock   lock                                DeleteDirectoryDirs target dir                                      private static void DeleteDirectoryDirs string target dir                System Threading Thread Sleep 100            if  Directory Exists target dir                          string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir                if  dirs Length    0                  Directory Delete target dir  false               else                 foreach  string dir in dirs                      DeleteDirectoryDirs dir                        private static void DeleteDirectoryFiles string target dir                string   files   Directory GetFiles target dir           string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir            foreach  string file in files                        File SetAttributes file  FileAttributes Normal               File Delete file                      foreach  string dir in dirs                        DeleteDirectoryFiles dir                     This code has the small delay  which is not important for my application  But be careful  the delay may be a problem for you if you have a lot of subdirectories inside the directory you want to delete

User · Answer

If your application s  or any other application s  current directory is the one you re trying to delete  it will not be an access violation error but a directory is not empty  Make sure it s not your own application by changing the current directory  also  make sure the directory is not open in some other program  e g  Word  excel  Total Commander  etc    Most programs will cd to the directory of the last file opened  which would cause that

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This is because of  FileChangesNotifications   It happens since ASP NET 2 0  When you delete some folder within an app  it gets restarted  You can see it yourself  using  ASP NET Health Monitoring   Just add this code to your web config configuration system web    lt healthMonitoring enabled  true  gt     lt rules gt       lt add name  MyAppLogEvents  eventName  Application Lifetime Events  provider  EventLogProvider  profile  Critical   gt     lt  rules gt   lt  healthMonitoring gt     After that check out Windows Log - gt  Application   What is going on     When you delete folder  if there is any sub-folder  Delete path  true  deletes sub-folder first  It is enough for FileChangesMonitor to know about removal and shut down your app  Meanwhile your main directory is not deleted yet  This is the event from Log         Delete   didn t finish its work and because app is shutting down  it raises an exception       When you do not have any subfolders in a folder that you are deleting  Delete   just deletes all files and that folder  app is getting restarted too  but you don t get any exceptions  because app restart doesn t interrupt anything  But still  you lose all in-process sessions  app doesn t response to requests when restarting  etc   What now   There are some workarounds and tweaks to disable this behaviour  Directory Junction  Turning Off FCN with Registry  Stopping FileChangesMonitor using Reflection  since there is no exposed method   but they all don t seem to be right  because FCN is there for a reason  It is looking after structure of your app  which is not structure of your data  Short answer is  place folders you want to delete outside of your app  FileChangesMonitor will get no notifications and your app will not be restarted every time  You will get no exceptions  To get them visible from the web there are two ways    Make a controller that handles incoming calls and then serves files back by reading from  folder outside an app  outside wwwroot   If your project is big and performance is most important  set up separate small and fast webserver for serving static content  Thus you will leave to IIS his specific job  It could be on the same machine  mongoose for Windows  or another machine  nginx for Linux   Good news is you don t have to pay extra microsoft license to set up static content server on linux    Hope this helps

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I think that there is a file open by some stream you are not aware of I had the same problem and solved it by closing all the streams that where pointing to the directory I wanted to delete

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If your application s  or any other application s  current directory is the one you re trying to delete  it will not be an access violation error but a directory is not empty  Make sure it s not your own application by changing the current directory  also  make sure the directory is not open in some other program  e g  Word  excel  Total Commander  etc    Most programs will cd to the directory of the last file opened  which would cause that

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add true in the second param   Directory Delete path  true     It will  remove all

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I had this problem today   It was happening because I had windows explorer open to the directory that was trying to be deleted  causing the recursive call the fail and thus the IOException   Make sure there are no handles open to the directory   Also  MSDN is clear that you don t have to write your own recusion  http   msdn microsoft com en-us library fxeahc5f aspx

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Is it possible you have a race condition where another thread or process is adding files to the directory   The sequence would be   Deleter process A    Empty the directory Delete the  now empty  directory    If someone else adds a file between 1  amp  2  then maybe 2 would throw the exception listed

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I m surprised that no one thought of this simple non-recursive method  which can delete directories containing read only files  without needing to change read only attribute of each of them    Process Start  cmd exe     c       rmdir  s q C  Test TestDirectoryContainingReadOnlyFiles        Change a bit to not to fire a cmd window momentarily  which is available all over the internet

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Editor s note  Although this answer contains some useful information  it is factually incorrect about the workings of Directory Delete  Please read the comments for this answer  and other answers to this question     I ran into this problem before   The root of the problem is that this function does not delete files that are within the directory structure  So what you ll need to do is create a function that deletes all the files within the directory structure then all the directories before removing the directory itself  I know this goes against the second parameter but it s a much safer approach  In addition  you will probably want to remove READ-ONLY access attributes from the files right before you delete them  Otherwise that will raise an exception   Just slap this code into your project   public static void DeleteDirectory string target dir        string   files   Directory GetFiles target dir       string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir        foreach  string file in files                File SetAttributes file  FileAttributes Normal           File Delete file              foreach  string dir in dirs                DeleteDirectory dir              Directory Delete target dir  false       Also  for me I personally add a restriction on areas of the machine that are allowed to be deleted because do you want someone to call this function on C  WINDOWS   WinDir   or C

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I had the very same problem under Delphi  And the end result was that my own application was locking the directory I wanted to delete  Somehow the directory got locked when I was writing to it  some temporary files    The catch 22 was  I made a simple change directory to it s parent before deleting it

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I  ve solved with this millenary technique  you can leave the Thread Sleep on his own in the catch   bool deleted   false          do                       try                               Directory Delete rutaFinal  true                                       deleted   true                            catch  Exception e                                string mensaje   e Message                  if  mensaje     The directory is not empty                    Thread Sleep 50                           while  deleted    false

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This error occurs if any file or directory is considered in-use  It is a misleading error  Check to see if you have any explorer windows or command-line windows open to any directory in the tree  or a program that is using a file in that tree

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Before going further  check for the following reasons that are under your control    Is the folder set as a current directory of your process  If yes  change it to something else first  Have you opened a file  or loaded a DLL  from that folder   and forgot to close unload it    Otherwise  check for the following legitimate reasons outside of your control    There are files marked as read-only in that folder  You don t have a deletion permission to some of those files  The file or subfolder is open in Explorer or another app    If any of the above is the problem  you should understand why it happens before trying to improve your deletion code  Should your app be deleting read-only or inaccessible files  Who marked them that way  and why   Once you have ruled out the above reasons  there s still a possibility of spurious failures  The deletion will fail if anyone holds a handle to any of the files or folders being deleted  and there are many reasons why someone may be enumerating the folder or reading its files    search indexers anti-viruses backup software   The general approach to deal with spurious failures is to try multiple times  pausing between the attempts  You obviously don t want to keep trying forever  so you should give up after a certain number of attempts and either throw an exception or ignore the error  Like this   private static void DeleteRecursivelyWithMagicDust string destinationDir        const int magicDust   10      for  var gnomes   1  gnomes  lt   magicDust  gnomes              try               Directory Delete destinationDir  true             catch  DirectoryNotFoundException                return      good            catch  IOException       System IO IOException  The directory is not empty             System Diagnostics Debug WriteLine  Gnomes prevent deletion of  0   Applying magic dust  attempt   1     destinationDir  gnomes                   see http   stackoverflow com questions 329355 cannot-delete-directory-with-directory-deletepath-true for more magic             Thread Sleep 50               continue                    return               depending on your use case  consider throwing an exception here     In my opinion  a helper like that should be used for all deletions because spurious failures are always possible  However  YOU SHOULD ADAPT THIS CODE TO YOUR USE CASE  not just blindly copy it   I had spurious failures for an internal data folder generated by my app  located under  LocalAppData   so my analysis goes like this    The folder is controlled solely by my application  and the user has no valid reason to go and mark things as read-only or inaccessible inside that folder  so I don t try to handle that case  There s no valuable user-created stuff in there  so there s no risk of forcefully deleting something by mistake  Being an internal data folder  I don t expect it to be open in explorer  at least I don t feel the need to specifically handle the case  i e  I m fine handling that case via support   If all attempts fail  I choose to ignore the error  Worst case  the app fails to unpack some newer resources  crashes and prompts the user to contact support  which is acceptable to me as long as it does not happen often  Or  if the app does not crash  it will leave some old data behind  which again is acceptable to me  I choose to limit retries to 500ms  50   10   This is an arbitrary threshold which works in practice  I wanted the threshold to be short enough so that users wouldn t kill the app  thinking that it has stopped responding  On the other hand  half a second is plenty of time for the offender to finish processing my folder  Judging from other SO answers which sometimes find even Sleep 0  to be acceptable  very few users will ever experience more than a single retry  I retry every 50ms  which is another arbitrary number  I feel that if a file is being processed  indexed  checked  when I try to delete it  50ms is about the right time to expect the processing to be completed in my case  Also  50ms is small enough to not result in a noticeable slowdown  again  Sleep 0  seems to be enough in many cases  so we don t want to delay too much  The code retries on any IO exceptions  I don t normally expect any exceptions accessing  LocalAppData   so I chose simplicity and accepted the risk of a 500ms delay in case a legitimate exception happens  I also didn t want to figure out a way to detect the exact exception that I want to retry on

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One important thing which should be mentioned  I d added it as a comment but I m not allowed to  is that the overload s behavior changed from  NET 3 5 to  NET 4 0   Directory Delete myPath  true     Starting from  NET 4 0 it deletes files in the folder itself but NOT in 3 5  This can be seen in the MSDN documentation as well    NET 4 0     Deletes the specified directory and  if indicated  any subdirectories and files in the directory     NET 3 5     Deletes an empty directory and  if indicated  any subdirectories and files in the directory

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This answer is based on  https   stackoverflow com a 1703799 184528  The difference with my code  is that we only recurse many delete sub-directories and files when necessary a call to Directory Delete fails on a first attempt  which can happen because of windows explorer looking at a directory         public static void DeleteDirectory string dir  bool secondAttempt   false                   If this is a second try  we are going to manually             delete the files and sub-directories           if  secondAttempt                           Interrupt the current thread to allow Explorer time to release a directory handle             Thread Sleep 0                   Delete any files in the directory              foreach  var f in Directory GetFiles dir         SearchOption TopDirectoryOnly                   File Delete f                   Try manually recursing and deleting sub-directories              foreach  var d in Directory GetDirectories dir                   DeleteDirectory d                   Now we try to delete the current directory             Directory Delete dir  false               return                     try                          First attempt  use the standard MSDN approach                 This will throw an exception a directory is open in explorer             Directory Delete dir  true                     catch  IOException                           Try again to delete the directory manually recursing               DeleteDirectory dir  true                     catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                           Try again to delete the directory manually recursing               DeleteDirectory dir  true

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One important thing which should be mentioned  I d added it as a comment but I m not allowed to  is that the overload s behavior changed from  NET 3 5 to  NET 4 0   Directory Delete myPath  true     Starting from  NET 4 0 it deletes files in the folder itself but NOT in 3 5  This can be seen in the MSDN documentation as well    NET 4 0     Deletes the specified directory and  if indicated  any subdirectories and files in the directory     NET 3 5     Deletes an empty directory and  if indicated  any subdirectories and files in the directory

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I have spent few hours to solve this problem and other exceptions with deleting the directory  This is my solution   public static void DeleteDirectory string target dir                DeleteDirectoryFiles target dir           while  Directory Exists target dir                         lock   lock                                DeleteDirectoryDirs target dir                                      private static void DeleteDirectoryDirs string target dir                System Threading Thread Sleep 100            if  Directory Exists target dir                          string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir                if  dirs Length    0                  Directory Delete target dir  false               else                 foreach  string dir in dirs                      DeleteDirectoryDirs dir                        private static void DeleteDirectoryFiles string target dir                string   files   Directory GetFiles target dir           string   dirs   Directory GetDirectories target dir            foreach  string file in files                        File SetAttributes file  FileAttributes Normal               File Delete file                      foreach  string dir in dirs                        DeleteDirectoryFiles dir                     This code has the small delay  which is not important for my application  But be careful  the delay may be a problem for you if you have a lot of subdirectories inside the directory you want to delete

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Is it possible you have a race condition where another thread or process is adding files to the directory   The sequence would be   Deleter process A    Empty the directory Delete the  now empty  directory    If someone else adds a file between 1  amp  2  then maybe 2 would throw the exception listed

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It appears that having the path or subfolder selected in Windows Explorer is enough to block a single execution of Directory Delete path  true   throwing an IOException as described above and dying instead of booting Windows Explorer out to a parent folder and proceding as expected

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I think that there is a file open by some stream you are not aware of I had the same problem and solved it by closing all the streams that where pointing to the directory I wanted to delete

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This answer is based on  https   stackoverflow com a 1703799 184528  The difference with my code  is that we only recurse many delete sub-directories and files when necessary a call to Directory Delete fails on a first attempt  which can happen because of windows explorer looking at a directory         public static void DeleteDirectory string dir  bool secondAttempt   false                   If this is a second try  we are going to manually             delete the files and sub-directories           if  secondAttempt                           Interrupt the current thread to allow Explorer time to release a directory handle             Thread Sleep 0                   Delete any files in the directory              foreach  var f in Directory GetFiles dir         SearchOption TopDirectoryOnly                   File Delete f                   Try manually recursing and deleting sub-directories              foreach  var d in Directory GetDirectories dir                   DeleteDirectory d                   Now we try to delete the current directory             Directory Delete dir  false               return                     try                          First attempt  use the standard MSDN approach                 This will throw an exception a directory is open in explorer             Directory Delete dir  true                     catch  IOException                           Try again to delete the directory manually recursing               DeleteDirectory dir  true                     catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                           Try again to delete the directory manually recursing               DeleteDirectory dir  true

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Recursive directory deletion that does not delete files is certainly unexpected  My fix for that   public class IOUtils       public static void DeleteDirectory string directory                Directory GetFiles directory       SearchOption AllDirectories  ForEach File Delete           Directory Delete directory  true             I experienced cases where this helped  but generally  Directory Delete deletes files inside directories upon recursive deletion  as documented in msdn   From time to time I encounter this irregular behavior also as a user of Windows Explorer  Sometimes I cannot delete a folder  it think the nonsensical message is  access denied   but when I drill down and delete lower items I can then delete the upper items as well  So I guess the code above deals with an OS anomaly - not with a base class library issue

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Modern Async Answer  The accepted answer is just plain wrong  it might work for some people because the time taken to get files from disk frees up whatever was locking the files  The fact is  this happens because files get locked by some other process stream action  The other answers use Thread Sleep  Yuck  to retry deleting the directory after some time  This question needs revisiting with a more modern answer   public static async Task lt bool gt  TryDeleteDirectory     string directoryPath     int maxRetries   10     int millisecondsDelay   30        if  directoryPath    null          throw new ArgumentNullException directoryPath       if  maxRetries  lt  1          throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException nameof maxRetries        if  millisecondsDelay  lt  1          throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException nameof millisecondsDelay         for  int i   0  i  lt  maxRetries    i                try                       if  Directory Exists directoryPath                                 Directory Delete directoryPath  true                              return true                    catch  IOException                        await Task Delay millisecondsDelay                     catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                        await Task Delay millisecondsDelay                        return false      Unit Tests  These tests show an example of how a locked file can cause the Directory Delete to fail and how the TryDeleteDirectory method above fixes the problem    Fact  public async Task TryDeleteDirectory FileLocked DirectoryNotDeletedReturnsFalse         var directoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath    Guid NewGuid   ToString         var subDirectoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath     SubDirectory        var filePath   Path Combine directoryPath   File txt         try               Directory CreateDirectory directoryPath           Directory CreateDirectory subDirectoryPath            using  var fileStream   new FileStream filePath  FileMode Create  FileAccess Write  FileShare Write                         var result   await TryDeleteDirectory directoryPath  3  30               Assert False result               Assert True Directory Exists directoryPath                        finally               if  Directory Exists directoryPath                         Directory Delete directoryPath  true                       Fact  public async Task TryDeleteDirectory FileLockedThenReleased DirectoryDeletedReturnsTrue         var directoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath    Guid NewGuid   ToString         var subDirectoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath     SubDirectory        var filePath   Path Combine directoryPath   File txt         try               Directory CreateDirectory directoryPath           Directory CreateDirectory subDirectoryPath            Task lt bool gt  task          using  var fileStream   new FileStream filePath  FileMode Create  FileAccess Write  FileShare Write                         task   TryDeleteDirectory directoryPath  3  30               await Task Delay 30               Assert True Directory Exists directoryPath                       var result   await task          Assert True result           Assert False Directory Exists directoryPath              finally               if  Directory Exists directoryPath                         Directory Delete directoryPath  true

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This problem can appear on Windows when there are files in a directory  or in any subdirectory  which path length is greater than 260 symbols   In such cases you need to delete       C  mydir instead of C  mydir  About the 260 symbols limit you can read here

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Modern Async Answer  The accepted answer is just plain wrong  it might work for some people because the time taken to get files from disk frees up whatever was locking the files  The fact is  this happens because files get locked by some other process stream action  The other answers use Thread Sleep  Yuck  to retry deleting the directory after some time  This question needs revisiting with a more modern answer   public static async Task lt bool gt  TryDeleteDirectory     string directoryPath     int maxRetries   10     int millisecondsDelay   30        if  directoryPath    null          throw new ArgumentNullException directoryPath       if  maxRetries  lt  1          throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException nameof maxRetries        if  millisecondsDelay  lt  1          throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException nameof millisecondsDelay         for  int i   0  i  lt  maxRetries    i                try                       if  Directory Exists directoryPath                                 Directory Delete directoryPath  true                              return true                    catch  IOException                        await Task Delay millisecondsDelay                     catch  UnauthorizedAccessException                        await Task Delay millisecondsDelay                        return false      Unit Tests  These tests show an example of how a locked file can cause the Directory Delete to fail and how the TryDeleteDirectory method above fixes the problem    Fact  public async Task TryDeleteDirectory FileLocked DirectoryNotDeletedReturnsFalse         var directoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath    Guid NewGuid   ToString         var subDirectoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath     SubDirectory        var filePath   Path Combine directoryPath   File txt         try               Directory CreateDirectory directoryPath           Directory CreateDirectory subDirectoryPath            using  var fileStream   new FileStream filePath  FileMode Create  FileAccess Write  FileShare Write                         var result   await TryDeleteDirectory directoryPath  3  30               Assert False result               Assert True Directory Exists directoryPath                        finally               if  Directory Exists directoryPath                         Directory Delete directoryPath  true                       Fact  public async Task TryDeleteDirectory FileLockedThenReleased DirectoryDeletedReturnsTrue         var directoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath    Guid NewGuid   ToString         var subDirectoryPath   Path Combine Path GetTempPath     SubDirectory        var filePath   Path Combine directoryPath   File txt         try               Directory CreateDirectory directoryPath           Directory CreateDirectory subDirectoryPath            Task lt bool gt  task          using  var fileStream   new FileStream filePath  FileMode Create  FileAccess Write  FileShare Write                         task   TryDeleteDirectory directoryPath  3  30               await Task Delay 30               Assert True Directory Exists directoryPath                       var result   await task          Assert True result           Assert False Directory Exists directoryPath              finally               if  Directory Exists directoryPath                         Directory Delete directoryPath  true

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If your application s  or any other application s  current directory is the one you re trying to delete  it will not be an access violation error but a directory is not empty  Make sure it s not your own application by changing the current directory  also  make sure the directory is not open in some other program  e g  Word  excel  Total Commander  etc    Most programs will cd to the directory of the last file opened  which would cause that

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I ve had this same problem with Windows Workflow Foundation on a build server with TFS2012  Internally  the workflow called Directory Delete   with the recursive flag set to true  It appears to be network related in our case    We were deleting a binary drop folder on a network share before re-creating and re-populating it with the latest binaries  Every other build would fail  When opening the drop folder after a failed build  the folder was empty  which indicates that every aspect of the Directory Delete   call was successful except for deleting the actually directory   The problem appears to be caused by the asynchronous nature of network file communications  The build server told the file server to delete all of the files and the file server reported that it had  even though it wasn t completely finished  Then the build server requested that the directory be deleted and the file server rejected the request because it hadn t completely finished deleting the files   Two possible solutions in our case    Build up the recursive deletion in our own code with delays and verifications between each step Retry up to X times after an IOException  giving a delay before trying again   The latter method is quick and dirty but seems to do the trick

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I  ve solved with this millenary technique  you can leave the Thread Sleep on his own in the catch   bool deleted   false          do                       try                               Directory Delete rutaFinal  true                                       deleted   true                            catch  Exception e                                string mensaje   e Message                  if  mensaje     The directory is not empty                    Thread Sleep 50                           while  deleted    false

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I had the very same problem under Delphi  And the end result was that my own application was locking the directory I wanted to delete  Somehow the directory got locked when I was writing to it  some temporary files    The catch 22 was  I made a simple change directory to it s parent before deleting it

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in case of network files  Directory DeleteHelper recursive  true  might cause IOException which caused by the delay of deleting file

[c#] Cannot delete directory with Directory.Delete(path, true)

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