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. First though, I want to mention the
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in description, and now let's get started. 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. But before we do that, let me
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description, and now let's continue. 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. Be sure to check out privacy.com/ThioJoe
for that $5 credit for a limited time. 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.
