Windows – How to Delete Windows ‘Locked’ Files

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My friend gave me a USB key that has Windows Viruses on it.

On my mac, when I try to delete them it fails and tells me that those files are "locked".
I ran an anti-virus, which also was unable to delete them for the same reason.

Best Answer

There are two options for files that came from a Windows drive:

  1. Right click on the file and select "Get Info" (or mark all files and press command + alt + i) to get the file information. There in the "General"-tab you can find and opt-out the "Locked"-option. Trash and delete them.
  2. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and type cd /Volumes/YourDrive, then rm -r thefile.exe. If that fails, try sudo rm -r thefile.exe and enter your password.

Mac has other steps if you can't unlock the file - see this article - TS1402 for details on immutable flags and if the directory permissions won't let you modify a file. The two above steps handle the vast majority of locked files on the mac.

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