Windows – My Downloads folder disappeared

Windows keeps track of the location of special folders in the registry. Have you ever used regedit.exe? Start that program and browse to:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

In that folder, there is an entry with this name:

{374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B}

That entry should be set to the location of your Downloads folder, usually:

C:\Users\[username]\Downloads

There is another entry here:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Same name as before:

{374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B}

This entry should be set to:

%USERPROFILE%\Downloads

You might consider trying to run the command prompt as Administrator (Right click on a shortcut for command prompt, and choose that option) and delete the folder from the command line.

Switch to the parent directory, and do a del /S /Q "FolderName"