Remove-Item -Recurse -Force can't remove symlinks

user_42610 0
Viewed 2023

It seems that Remove-Item -Recurse -Force cannot deal with removing symlinks. How do I recursively delete everything from a given directory with symlinks made all over the place?

MWE:

PS C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test> mkdir foo
    Directory: C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test
Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d-----        7/30/2020  11:58 AM                foo

PS C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test> mkdir bar
    Directory: C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test
Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d-----        7/30/2020  11:58 AM                bar

PS C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test> New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path foo -Name bar -Value C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test\bar
    Directory: C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test\foo
Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d----l        7/30/2020  11:59 AM                bar

PS C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test> Remove-Item -Recurse -Force foo
Remove-Item : There is a mismatch between the tag specified in the request and the tag present in the reparse point
At line:1 char:1
+ Remove-Item -Recurse -Force foo
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Remove-Item], Win32Exception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
symlink powershell
3 Answers

The actual CMD equivalent to Remove-Item -Recurse -Force is:

cmd /c rmdir /s /q foo

as it will delete symlinks also in subdirectories. This seems to be good enough for me.

user_426100
user_78543870

There's always cmd. Wmi and powershell can't even delete profiles these days because of links.

cmd /c del bar
user_66549420
Related