Force-remove files and directories in PowerShell fails sometimes, but not always

Question

I am trying to delete a directory recursively with rm -Force -Recurse somedirectory, I get several "The directory is not empty" errors. If I retry the same command, it succeeds.

Example:

PS I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net> rm -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests\Data\RunTime\_svn: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (_svn:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests\Data\RunTime: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (RunTime:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests\Data: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (Data:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (FileHelpers.Tests:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\Libs\nunit\_svn: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (_svn:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\Libs\nunit: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (nunit:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\Libs: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (Libs:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (I:\Documents an...net\FileHelpers:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
PS I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net> rm -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
PS I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net>

Of course, this doesn't happen always. Also, it doesn't happen only with _svn directories, and I don't have a TortoiseSVN cache or anything like that so nothing is blocking the directory.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

help Remove-Item says:

The Recurse parameter in this cmdlet does not work properly.

and

Because the Recurse parameter in this cmdlet is faulty, the command uses the Get-Childitem cmdlet to get the desire d files, and it uses the pipeline operator to pass them to the Remove-Item cmdlet.

and proposes this alternative as an example:

get-childitem * -include *.csv -recurse | remove-item

So you should pipe get-childitem -recurse into remove-item.

Answer 2

@JamesCW: The problem still exists in PowerShell 4.0

I tried another workaround and it worked: use cmd.exe:

&cmd.exe /c rd /s /q $somedirectory

Answer 3

Update: Starting with (at least) Windows 10 version 20H2 (I don't know that Windows Server version and build that corresponds to; run winver.exe to check your version and build), the DeleteFile Windows API function now exhibits synchronous behavior, which implicitly solves the problems with PowerShell's Remove-Item and .NET's System.IO.File.Delete / System.IO.Directory.Delete (but, curiously, not with cmd.exe's rd /s).

---

The existing answers mitigate the problem, so that it occurs less frequently, but they don't address the root cause, which is why failures can still occur.

Remove-Item -Recurse is unexpectedly asynchronous, ultimately because the Windows API methods for file and directory removal are inherently asynchronous and Remove-Item doesn't account for that.

This intermittently, unpredictably manifests in one of two ways:

• Your case: Removing a nonempty directory itself can fail, if removal of a subdirectory or file in it hasn't completed yet by the time an attempt is made to remove the parent directory.

• Less commonly: Recreating a removed directory immediately after removal can fail, because the removal may not have completed yet by the time re-creation is attempted.

The problem not only affects PowerShell's Remove-Item, but also cmd.exe's rd /s as well as .NET's [System.IO.Directory]::Delete():

As of Windows PowerShell v5.1 / PowerShell Core 6.2.0-preview.1 / cmd.exe 10.0.17134.407 / .NET Framework 4.7.03056, .NET Core 2.1, neither Remove-Item, nor rd /s, nor [System.IO.Directory]::Delete() work reliably, because they fail to account for the asynchronous behavior of the Windows API file/directory-removal functions:

• PowerShell Core bug report
• cmd.exe bug report
• .NET Core bug report

For a custom PowerShell function that provides a reliably synchronous workaround, see this SO answer.

Answer 4

ETA 20181217: PSVersion 4.0 and later will still fail in some circumstances, see alternate answer by Mehrdad Mirreza, and bug report filed by mklement

mklement provides a Proof of Concept solution at this SO answer, as the bug is awaiting an official fix

The new version of PowerShell (PSVersion 4.0) has resolved this issue entirely and Remove-Item "targetdirectory" -Recurse -Force works without any timing problems.

You can check your version by running $PSVersiontable from within the ISE or PowerShell prompt. 4.0 is the version that ships with Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2, and it can be installed on previous versions of Windows as well.

Answer 5

Gosh. Lots of answers. I honestly prefer this one over all of them. It's super simple, complete, readable, and works on any Windows machine. It uses .NET's (reliable) recursive delete functionality and if it fails for some reason, it throws a proper exception that can be handled with a try/catch block.

$fullPath = (Resolve-Path "directory\to\remove").ProviderPath
[IO.Directory]::Delete($fullPath, $true)

Note that the Resolve-Path line is important because .NET is not aware of your current directory when resolving relative file paths. That's about the only gotcha I can think of.

Answer 6

The current answer won't actually delete a directory, just its children. Furthermore it will have problems with nested directories as it will again be trying to delete a directory before its contents. I wrote something to delete the files in the correct order, would still have the same problem though sometimes the directory would still be around afterward.

So, now I use something that will catch the exception, wait, and retry (3 times):

For now I'm using this:

function EmptyDirectory($directory = $(throw "Required parameter missing")) {

    if ((test-path $directory) -and -not (gi $directory | ? { $_.PSIsContainer })) {
        throw ("EmptyDirectory called on non-directory.");
    }

    $finished = $false;
    $attemptsLeft = 3;

    do {
        if (test-path $directory) {
            rm $directory -recurse -force
        }

        try {
            $null = mkdir $directory
            $finished = $true
        } 
        catch [System.IO.IOException] {
            Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 500
        }

        $attemptsLeft = $attemptsLeft - 1;
    } 
    while (-not $finished -and $attemptsLeft -gt 0)

    if (-not $finished) {
        throw ("Unable to clean and recreate directory " + $directory)
    }
}

Answer 7

To delete the directory and its contents takes two steps. First delete the contents, then the folder itself. Using the workaround for the faulty recursive remove item the solution would look like this:

Get-ChildItem -Path "$folder\\*" -Recurse | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
Remove-Item $folder

This way you can remove the parent directory as well.

Answer 8

This is what I have working:

$Target = "c:\folder_to_delete"

Get-ChildItem -Path $Target -Recurse -force |
  Where-Object { -not ($_.psiscontainer) } |
   Remove-Item –Force

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force $Target

This first line deletes all files in the tree. The second deletes all the folders including the top.

Answer 9

Take ownership of the files / directories first using Takeown.exe then delete

https://learn-powershell.net/2014/06/24/changing-ownership-of-file-or-folder-using-powershell/

Answer 10

I had this issue with a directory that would not delete. I found that one of the subfolders was corrupted and when I tried to move or rename that child dir I got an error message saying something about it being missing. I tried using rm -Force and got the same error as you did.

What worked for me was compressing the parent dir using 7-zip with the "Delete files after compression" option checked. Once it was compressed I was able to delete the zip file.

Answer 11

The solution above works for most of my scripts. But then I found some folders that the above solution didn't work on. What fixed it for me on the stubborn folder is robocopy /PURGE /PURGE: Delete dest files/folders that no longer exist in the source So if you make an empty fold, copy it to the destination folder with robocopy /PURGE. Robocopy will clean it out then you can del the folder with $output_path | Remove-Item -Recurse -force