I can't delete the steam folder

[kylegood1288]

I am trying to start over from scratch with Steam. I have uninstalled everything from steam, but the folders are still there. I cant delete the folders or anything because it says i dont have permission. I dont know what else to do.

[Sticky Honeybuns]

You are not logged in as administrator. You may need to give the account administrator rights in order to delete. What is your OS?

[kylegood1288]

Originally posted by Sticky Honeybuns:

You are not logged in as administrator. You may need to give the account administrator rights in order to delete. What is your OS?

I thought I was the administrator. I'm the only one that uses the computer. I am on windows 10

[kylegood1288]

Ok I know that I am in fact set as the administrator for this PC. I have even verified my account on the PC. It still says that it is open in another program or I need permission from the administrator.

I tried to delete everything in the steam folder a while back to start from scratch, but I was only able to delete some of the contents. I can't delete anymore because of this issue.

[Sticky Honeybuns]

Well, I still think you aren't the administrator. It should say if you are the admin in the system in control panel.

If you are in fact the admin then I'm not sure what the problem is. However, you could fix the issue by formatting your HDD and starting from scratch. This would require you to backup all of your data on another drive though.

[Snapjak]

Open up task manager and kill anything related to steam. Then try it.

[ojala :v]

Originally posted by kylegood1288:

Originally posted by Sticky Honeybuns:

You are not logged in as administrator. You may need to give the account administrator rights in order to delete. What is your OS?

I thought I was the administrator. I'm the only one that uses the computer. I am on windows 10

[kylegood1288]

So I ended up having to do a clean reset of my windows 10. I just went to settings and recovery and wiped all my files and apps out. I downloaded steam with no problems.

[Jac'd]

Hi, I just had the same issue with my girlfriend's computer when she was trying to remove and re-install. Turns out the solution for her was to go into the steam folder and delete any sub-folders within each folder. It is an annoying process, but that allowed her to delete the main Steam folder afterwards. Turns out that even though each of the folders were empty of files, because the folders CONTAINED folders (meaning they weren't empty) it would not allow her to delete even as an administrator. Hope this helps someone out in the event you can't perform a system recovery like the above guy.

[PrincessOfTheNight]

An update: I had this happen to me as well. Had Microsoft help me out. My issue was that even after uninstalling the games there remained folders I couldn't open or delete, and they took up about 4 GB of space altogether. The tech guy mentioned that it was a problem with Steam itself, not with Windows 10, as he had issues deleting everything himself, even after trying every trick in the book. He ended up having to access the registry and deleting anything and everything Steam-related. After that, I abstained from Steam for almost a year... Before I stupidly thought "eh I'm sure the same crap can't happen twice. I have admin privileges."

And yet here I am, looking to see how to fix this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ problem. My guess is I'm gonna have to go into the registry again and delete all of the Steam entries.

[billabong]

its igfem.exe or smthng

[Bilateral Baka]

Originally posted by Jagd_UP:

Hi, I just had the same issue with my girlfriend's computer when she was trying to remove and re-install. Turns out the solution for her was to go into the steam folder and delete any sub-folders within each folder. It is an annoying process, but that allowed her to delete the main Steam folder afterwards. Turns out that even though each of the folders were empty of files, because the folders CONTAINED folders (meaning they weren't empty) it would not allow her to delete even as an administrator. Hope this helps someone out in the event you can't perform a system recovery like the above guy.

Thanks mate! I searched the entire internet for all sorts of complicated ways to delete steam workshop folders, but the method you stated was the only way! Deleted all subfolders and voilá, I could delete the main folder.

[Jeff]

I had the same problem, in particular with Kerbal Space Program, and I found the following solution:

As it turned out for some reason the Intel graphics driver's runtime component had locked the directory. This never happened on another Windows 10 system that didn't have that driver on it for me. If you go download Process Explorer from MS and then use the find function, search for 'kerbal' and see if there is a process locking it. After I killed the process tree locking it I was able to move\delete folders.

[ras Livity]

Originally posted by Jaqd_UP:

Hi, I just had the same issue with my girlfriend's computer when she was trying to remove and re-install. Turns out the solution for her was to go into the steam folder and delete any sub-folders within each folder. It is an annoying process, but that allowed her to delete the main Steam folder afterwards. Turns out that even though each of the folders were empty of files, because the folders CONTAINED folders (meaning they weren't empty) it would not allow her to delete even as an administrator. Hope this helps someone out in the event you can't perform a system recovery like the above guy.

ty for this

[Andy S]

Originally posted by Jaqd_UP:

Hi, I just had the same issue with my girlfriend's computer when she was trying to remove and re-install. Turns out the solution for her was to go into the steam folder and delete any sub-folders within each folder. It is an annoying process, but that allowed her to delete the main Steam folder afterwards. Turns out that even though each of the folders were empty of files, because the folders CONTAINED folders (meaning they weren't empty) it would not allow her to delete even as an administrator. Hope this helps someone out in the event you can't perform a system recovery like the above guy.

Thank you! I was trying to reinstall Steam after having deleted the program a couple months back, and I couldn't get rid of the old folders. This worked.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Just put Steam somewhere else; not a system folder.
Such as C:\Steam
You don't need to uninstall/reinstall Steam, ever.
Just put the Steam.exe where you want it and run it, done.