How to Delete a Junction by Using Command Prompt in Windows 7

Question

I believe in Windows Vista, we could use linkd command. However, I cannot find this command in Windows 7. I know I can use Windows Explorer and delete the junction, but I wonder if this can be done in Command Prompt.

I can use mklink command to create a junction from a Command Prompt, so, what is the opposite of it (something like linkd)?

score 157 · Accepted Answer · edited May 14 '19 at 23:00

157

Delete junctions with rmdir (rd). Works in all Windows versions.

edited May 14 '19 at 23:00

Cristian Ciupitu

5,693

answered May 19 '11 at 05:41

grawity

501,077

score 35 · Answer 2 · edited May 14 '19 at 23:06

35

In my experience fsutil reparsepoint will take care of some cases where rmdir gives Access Denied.

fsutil reparsepoint delete <<PATH>>

edited May 14 '19 at 23:06

Cristian Ciupitu

5,693

answered Oct 08 '14 at 00:23

Spig

471

score 13 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 02 '22 at 13:13

13

Use the -d flag on junction (junction -d ...)

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/junction

edited Dec 02 '22 at 13:13

0xC0000022L

7,544
10
54
94

answered Dec 18 '13 at 14:59

Jeff G

131

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 15 '22 at 21:49

I ran into pretty severe issue where none of the above worked (fsutil or sysinternal junction command) because I had moved WindowsApps folder to different drive and then tried to use that drive on another computer. Once junctions don't have valid pointer, it seems they get impossible to be deleted. One thing that seems to worked was using WSL (type command bash) from elevated Windows terminal and then do sudo rm -rf \mnt\e\WindowsApps\. You can also try to turn off Gaming Services in Services if you keep getting Access Denied (alternatively, login to console at startup). Another useful app towards this task is LockHunter which allows to mark files to be deleted at startup.

How to Delete a Junction by Using Command Prompt in Windows 7

4 Answers4

Linked