[6 Free Ways] How to Delete Corrupted Files on Windows 10

How to delete a corrupted file on Windows 10?

Why can't delete corrupted files on Windows 10?

Sometimes, when you clean up the PC, you may find some corrupted files, and the computer refuses to delete them as "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable".

Why can't delete corrupted files from your computer? The following are possible reasons:

☎ A program or system is occupying the corrupted files.
☎ Corrupted files are affected by application bugs.
☎ The corrupted files are attacked by a foreign virus.
☎ The hard drive where the files are stored is not properly inserted or removed.
☎ The computer hard drive is damaged due to bad sectors or file system errors.
☎ The corrupted files are write-protected.
☎ Unnatural shutdown of the computer due to some unpredictable factor, such as a sudden power failure.

When the files are corrupted, they become worthless and only take up free space on your computer. So how to delete a corrupted file on Windows 10? Read on, we'll share 4 methods below to remove corrupted files from your PC.

Four methods of deleting a corrupted file on Windows 10

It is important to delete corrupt files from your computer. When you can't delete these corrupted files directly from your computer, you can take the following measures.

│Method 1. Remove corrupted files as administrator

In order to delete corrupted files from your computer, first you can try to delete them as an administrator. The detailed steps are as follows:

Step 1. Close all programs on your system and restart your computer.

Step 2. After entering the "Welcome" screen, you need to log in with the administrator account.

Step 3. Find the corrupt files on your computer and move them to the Recycle Bin. Then right-click the Recycle Bin and select "Empty Recycle Bin".

│Method 2. Remove corrupted files in safe mode

Safe mode is a special mode in the Windows operating system. Computer in safe mode will run the system in the most concise mode, which is convenient for users to detect and repair the PC system errors. Here are the steps of deleting a corrupted file:

Step 1. Restart the PC and press one of the "F1-F8" keys, then click "Troubleshoot".

Step 2. Select the "Advanced Options" and click "Startup Settings" option.

Step 3. In the new window, select "Enable Safe Mode".

Step 4. Find out the corrupted files in the computer, delete them and then restart the computer.

│Method 3. Turn off Windows Explorer

Besides, turning off Windows Explorer in Task Manager is also a good way to effectively remove corrupted files.

Step 1. Press "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" and select "Task Manager" in the new interface.

Step 2. Find out Windows Explorer in Task Manager, then right-click it and click "End task".

│Method 4. Forcibly remove corrupted files using CMD

Windows built-in tool CMD also provides you with a way to force delete corrupted files.

Step 1. Type "cmd" in the Windows search bar and click "Run as administrator".

Step 2. In the new window, type "Del /F /Q /A" and press "Enter".

Remove corrupted files with a more comprehensive disk manager

What can you do if you still cannot delete the corrupted files after trying the above 4 methods? Here, we would like to recommend to you a simple and efficient freeware - AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

Just with several simple steps, this powerful tool can easily delete these corrupted files in different ways, and you won't worry about any security hazard. In addition, this comprehensive disk manager also provides you with resize partition (including the BitLocker partition), format partition, wipe hard drive, etc.

Please download it and see how to delete corrupted files on Windows 10.

│Case 1. Shred Files

First, you can use the "Shred Files" feature to force delete the target corrupted file.

Step 1. Install AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, click "Wipe" in the top interface and click "Shred Files".

Step 2. Click "Add Files" and select the corrupted files to be forcibly deleted.

Step 3. Select "Write Zero" as the shredding method and click "Shred".

Step 4. There's a popped prompt, read it carefully and click "Yes".

Note: You can turn to the Professional Version, choosing more advanced methods of shredding files, including Random data, DOD S220.22-M and Gutmann.

│Case 2. PC Cleaner

The second feature is PC Cleaner, which totally scans and cleans your computer for junk files, including the corrupted files.

Step 1. In the main interface of AOMEI, click "Free up" and "PC Cleaner".

Step 2. You can get some information from the "Approximate 1.26 GB disk space you can free up" tip, click "Start Scan" and wait for a while.

Step 3. Choose the corrupted files and other junk files you want to delete, then click "Clean All".

Step 4. When the deleting task is finished, click "Back".

Tip: Please don't miss the "Delete Large Files" and "App Mover" features if you want to free up more space after deleting all the corrupted files.

Verdict

How to delete corrupted files on Windows 10? In this post, we shared 4 methods to delete corrupted files effectively. Besides, the perfect and free AOMEI Partition Assistant is also shared to delete corrupted files and clean your computer completely.

In addition, the professional version of this software also provides advanced functions such as allocate free space, migrate OS to SSD, and convert dynamic disk to basic. We also have a dedicated the Server Edition for Windows Server users.