Windows, the most common computer virus ever known.
Just kidding.
I think most of us do use Windows every single day.
And if you've ever browsed through your main drive on your computer, you
will probably notice the Windows folder or even gone digging around in there.
This directory is where all the core system files of the operating
system are stored, including that infamous System32 folder and more.
Now I made a video in the past to figure out what would
happen if you delete System32.
But I wanted to know what would happen if you delete the entire Windows
directory, but not only that I want to do it while Windows is running.
What fun would that be otherwise I'm expecting it will at least freeze up at
some point or maybe even blue screen.
We'll see.
It should be fun.
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So we can already assume that deleting the Windows directory will cause some major
issues to say the least, probably causing the system to freeze or crash, but let's
see how much we can get away with and observe any weird behavior before it does.
And then see if there's any way we could possibly recover from such destruction.
To get some context, let's quickly go over some of the
more important folders in here.
That way we can maybe hold off on those, and do them last to
delete as much as possible.
Obviously we mentioned System32, which has possibly the most critical
system files, not just for Windows itself, but also third-party programs
with things like shared libraries.
There's also a drivers folder in there for hardware devices.
And another important folder is the sysWOW64 folder, which is similar to
System32, but for 32 bit DLLs, the, winSXS folder is another critical folder,
which stores DLLs and library components and is used by many programs at once.
Not all of them are critical, but many are.
On Microsoft's own website,
it even says warning deleting the files from the winSXS folder or deleting the
entire winSXS folder may severely damage your system so that your PC might not
boot and make it impossible to update.
Now that's what I'm talking about.
Then there's plenty of other ones that sound important
that we can mess around with,
like System Resources, System Apps and Boot.
Now, obviously it's normally impossible to actually delete the Windows directory
and really any folder within it because it's protected by permissions.
But with enough effort, you can force yourself to get those permissions and
be able to delete anything you want.
As long as it's not actively being used by running program.
Also because this will clearly ruin any windows installation
you try it on, I'll be doing this with a virtual machine, but it
should still behave the same.
So enough chatting let's get into this.
All right.
So now we're inside Windows and we can just start trashing everything basically.
And I noticed there are still some permission issues.
So I can clear that up real quick.
And most of these folders are going down no problem.
There is some stuff that can't be deleted while it's being used,
even with permissions though, but that's not everything.
Of course we do have to make sure we delete all the actual files in
the Windows folder, not just things that are in folders themselves
and testing out some stuff,
it looks like the Start Menu and TaskBar at least still do work for now.
And then at this point it looks like a ton of the folders are gone, except for
the ones we couldn't delete completely.
So let's see what we can do about the sysWOW64 folder and I'll just select
a big chunk and it seems to have no problem deleting almost all of that.
So let's see if we can just delete all the files and it looks
like a good amount got deleted.
And we'll come back to that one.
I think next let's check out that winSXS folder, which has a ton of stuff in it.
I just literally select everything in there and try to delete it.
And this one is clearly going to take while you can see, it says there's
like 13,000 items or something.
It's ridiculous.
So yeah, that's going to take a while so we can see how much
stuff is broken in the meantime.
And it looks like the start menu still works, but the system seems to be slowing
down a lot, probably just from trying to delete so many files right now.
And I can still open explorer windows, that seems fine.
But when I do try to open Settings like the Personalized menu or whatever, it
just brings up an error, it can't do that.
The Task Manager still works, probably because we haven't touched
the System32 folder yet where that is, but it does freeze a bit.
You know there's a problem when the Task Manager itself stops responding.
I mean, what do you do?
Now the Task Bar itself seems to work, but nothing else on it really works.
Like searching, doesn't work, clicking the clock doesn't do anything.
I'm actually surprised at this point that Windows itself is still
running and hasn't totally crashed.
So now I think it's time we start deleting system32, and I'll just select all the
files and see what it will let me delete.
And then we can go back into the sysWOW64 and make sure we
didn't miss anything there.
System32 seems to have a lot of stuff that we can't delete because it's
in use, but a lot of it is gone.
So if you go to the start menu, for example, a lot of
the admin tools are gone.
You can see it's just not showing their icons at all, it's blank.
So now let's get into some of these directories it wouldn't let us delete
outright, and then go inside and delete some of the folders from within.
Like system apps here, it actually let me delete a lot more in there.
And then the System Resources, doesn't even have too much left anymore either.
And now I'm just seeing what we can delete in more of these folders.
There's a surprising amount that we can delete that we couldn't
from the top level folders.
And it looks like even all the fonts are gone too.
And now it looks like we can still open new Explorer windows.
But nothing else from the start menu works.
So no settings menus or anything, nothing happens when you click on them.
Though,
it seems like we can actually create some new files and folders interestingly.
And just poking around on the desktop, things don't really feel or look
any different, except that nothing opens when you click on, obviously.
But otherwise most of the Windows components must be running
and still loaded in memory.
So that's why it still is running itself.
If we do take a look in the recycle bin, we can see that I deleted over
19,000 items, which is pretty insane.
And now that we've basically deleted everything we can I think, we can try and
restart, see if it'll even let us, and then see what it says when we do that.
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At first it looked like it was not going to actually even
let me restart the computer.
It wasn't really responding when I clicked it.
But surprisingly, it did begin to restart.
And then it tries to start an automatic repair and not sure how
much it will be able to do there.
And I like how it does say "Diagnosing Your PC".
Like hmmm maybe it's because we deleted the entire operating system.
And no surprise here at all,
the automatic prepared does not work.
So it takes me to another menu where it offers some options, and we can go
through some of these troubleshooting options though, see what happens.
I do try to boot in Safe Mode through that setting, but it just brings me
back to the same start repair and it keeps looping, and I'd go to the system
restore, but that also doesn't work.
There's no system restore points.
And then even selecting "Reset This PC", which normally is like a complete restart
and reinstallation sort of, it just says "there was a problem resetting your PC".
Doesn't even let you do that.
So at this point, this whole windows installation is just stuck in a
boot loop and is completely done.
So when all was said and done, really the only surprise of all
this for me at least is the fact that Windows kept running it all.
I was expecting it to freeze up or blue screen or something, but
it didn't, but of course after restarting, it was completely finished.
So again, I want to thank privacy.com for sponsoring this video.
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And if you want to keep watching, I made a couple other similar videos.
Like what happens if you delete System32, you can check that out by
just clicking on that thumbnail here.
So thanks so much for watching guys, and I'll see you in the next one.