Why do I get message “Access to the path 'bootmgr' is denied ” when trying to clear the contents of a directory

Question

Using Windows 10 Home (20H2) on HP Spectre

I am trying to use the following code to clear the contents of a directory

public int clearDirectory(string path)
{
    DirectoryInfo targetDir = new DirectoryInfo(path);
    foreach (FileInfo file in targetDir.GetFiles())
    {
        file.Delete();
    }
    foreach (DirectoryInfo dir in targetDir.GetDirectories())
    {
        dir.Delete(true);
    }
    return 0;
}

The target directory is on a USB SanDisk which has in its root dir one directory (which has a number of subdirectories) which I created and the following SanDisk files

SanDiskMemoryZone_AppInstaller.apk
SanDiskMemoryZone_QuickStartGuide.pdf

I replaced the path to the USB drive with a path to a directory on my C drive and that worked fine.

How does the bootmgr get involved in this?

Answer 1

In Windows you can declare for each drive if it is bootable or not. The bootable partition in Windows is a hidden drive called system partition (and that's also the reason why no error was shown when you tried to delete the C:-drive)

Your SAN-drive seems to be using a file system which has a hidden folder with ACL only for the system account.

That's why you get this error. You have no access right to delete the file/folder.

One solution:

• change your code st It only selects files without a leading dot, like with regex: ^\.

If this still doesn't fix your error then you should try use an elevated process (with adminr rights) to tackle this.

REMARK: before you delete everything from a usb stick, it would be easier to just reformat it then deleting every file. Maybe look into Diskpart for this.