SuperDelete

About

A Windows command-line tool that can be used to delete files and folders with very long paths (longer than MAX_PATH 260 characters). It supports paths as long as 32767 characters. It works by using extended-length paths and the Unicode versions of the WinApi functions for enumerating and deleting files. In addition, it supports bypassing ACL checks for deleting folders if the user has administrative rights on the drive.

More info about the mechanism can be found in MSDN article Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces, in section "Maximum Path Length Limitation".

It's written in C#/NET and provides VS projects for building for .NET 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.6

Usage

It's fairly simple. Just open a command-line window and run the tool. It takes only one parameter, which can be a full file or folder path.

With confirmation

SuperDelete.exe fullPathToFileOrFolder

Silent mode

The tool supports an additional command line argument which suppresses the confirmation message. Could be used in automating some tasks. The argument is --silent or -s.

SuperDelete.exe --silent fullPathToFileOrFolder

Bypass ACLs

In the case where the user has administrative rights on the drive, the tool can bypass ACL checks and remove the file even if the user doesn't have rights in the ACL. This is useful in cases where a drive is moved from another machine or Windows installation.

SuperDelete.exe --bypassAcl fullPathToFileOrFolder

Printing stack trace

If there is an exception, this will print the callstack where the exception occurred. This is mostly useful for debugging.

SuperDelete.exe --printStackTrace fullPathToFileOrFolder

Downloads

The latest release is SuperDelete 1.2.0 and you can get it from the Releases page.