Unable to Delete Folder. 'You Need Permission To Perform This Action'

I have upgraded one of my Windows XP running system to Vista Home Premium. Its been over a month now with this new operating system and today i was just trying to clean up my start menu (classic view) but there are few folders which are not getting deleted even after several attempts. Whenever i try deleting these folders, it ends up with an error message saying:

"You need permission to perform this action".

Damn....which permission is it asking about? This system has just one user account and that is Administrator account and that is me. Can any one please provide me some information on this issue? Also let me know how can i get rid of the same? Many Thanks.

Let me tell you that most of the start menu folders use to contain several system folders and files. I am talking about folders like Extras and Upgrades, Games, Maintenance, etc. You cannot delete such files. if you want you can hide them for sure. However just try out this:

• Click Start, type Command Prompt. Right click CMD and run it as Administrator.
• Type attrib -r -a -s -h del [drive] path] [foldername] Press Enter.

Thank you very much for the help CostasD. Actually i always keep the explorer setting to show hidden files. So i dont think that will be proper workout for me. Anyways, i found a solution somewhere which seems to be working for me I just needed to open the folder and delete the individual files. After deleting those files i was able to delete the folder as well once all its files were deleted. Thanks anyway.

Whenever you get an error saying "You need permission to perform this action", another reason for the same possibly could be a file from those folder is current open. In such case what you need to do is open task manager and view the Processes tab. Sort by the Command Line column and look for any programs open from the folder you are trying to delete. End task on them all, then delete the folder.

Alternatively you can also try out the following in such cases:
1. Turn off User Account Control delete the file Tun User Account Control back on
2. Start | type Cmd.exe | right-click on cmd.exe in the Programs list directly above | select Run As Admistrator
3. Navigate to the directory containing file you want to delete (using CD command).
Delete the file using DEL command.

Here is how I fixed this problem on my computer.

Before reinstalling vista on my computer i had accidentally installed a game (Grid) on my backup hard drive, as you may have guessed i had to delete, now that i had reinstalled vista. Like you i am set as an admin on my computer as i am the only user, this being the case it still did not let me delete the folder, pain in the a... i went into the security tap in properties and it just had "Dan (Dan-PC\Dan)",though this account is an admin i decided to add "Administrators (Dan-PC Administrators)" to the list, it worked immediately after.

hope this helps

Hi, seems like i have very good experience with this problem. I have struggled a lot with such error message and finally found a working solution. Actually those folders are just authorized for installer. You need to change the user 'trusted installer' to 'administrators'. I prefer the CMD way for playing with permission. Here is how you can do that.

• Start | type Cmd.exe | right-click on cmd.exe and selected Run as Adminstrator
• Navigate to directory using cd command
• use rename command to rename folder (synatx is 'rename <directoryname> <newdirectoryname>')
• type exit to close cmd.exe
• navigate to now-renamed folder and delete it.

I don't know much about computers and I want to do this CD command but I don't know what it is. The issue I am having is a gadget that stopped recieving news headlines. In the gadget window you can click on a gadget and uninstall it. However if you track it down under program files the folder is still there. The NEW gadget i installed reads the same old headlines and never renews. Btw I did check the settings and even changed them in order to change them back while the gadget was running and it didn't change anything. I am convinced that the material in this folder is corrupt and needs to be eliminated in order to download a fresh gadget with it's own files/folders. How do I do this... I mean what do I type under cmd.exe in order to get to where I need to go which for me to find is c - prgram files - windows sidebar - RSSfeeds.gadget <--- that last being the one I want gone!
Any help is appreciated, thanks so much!

Thank you, this is exactly what I had to do to delete my pesky file and application. This hidden process is a dirty trick.

No, I did not have to do this in Safe mode.

I have had the same problem with 2 folders in my Local Disk (c:), they both had small padlocks on them and I tried all kinds of ways to delete them!
They both had duplicated information in them and totally useless to me!
This had been going on for months...then eureka!!
I clicked on one of the folders and then chose (shared Folder Synchronization)
start synchronization and hey presto...they both dissapeared before my very eyes!!
Hope this helps others and I hope they don't come back any time soon.

Madle

What I did to delete stubborn folder/files (I kept getting the same error as others) was to right-click on windows explorer, run as administrator, then drilled down to the folder (using the newly opened Windows Explorer) and deleted it. Didn't get any errors!