What would happen if you delete the entire windows directory?

What would happen if you delete the entire windows directory?

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 go on digging around in there this directory is where all the core system files of the operating system are stored, including that infamous system32 folder. In this post 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.

After Deleting the Folder

So after I deleted the Windows folder, 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 basically deleted everything we can.

Restarting the Windows after deleting the folder

I restarted the Windows to see if it'll even let us and then see what it says but 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 not sure how much it will be able to do there and I like how it does say diagnosing your PC like mmm maybe it's because we deleted the entire operating system and no surprise here at all the automatic repair 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 this same startup 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.

Result

So when all was said and done really the only surprise that all this for me at least is the fact that windows kept running at 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.