I cannot delete the "System queued windows error reporting" file, and it is occupying 12.6 GB. Help urgently needed

Question

Hello everyone,

I cannot delete the "System queued windows error reporting" file, and it is occupying 12.6 GB (Fig. 1).

I go to Disk Cleanup, choose the option to delete the file, and Windows prompt the window: "Are you sure you permanently want to delete these files?". I choose the "Delete Files" option, and the system apparently proceeds to delete the files (Fig. 2).

But then when I check again the Disk Cleanup, the file with 12.6 GB (Fig. 1) is still there! I have done this process several times but the file does not get deleted.

I have already disabled the Windows Error Reporting option in the Local Group Policy Editor (Fig. 3).

Please your help with this issue.

Thanks!

Sebastian

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig.3:

Answer 1

I expect that the answer it "Yes," but did you run Disk Cleanup "As administrator" and not just from a user account with "administrator" privileges?

Take a look in the following locations:

• I believe that the System Queued Windows Error Reporting Files are here:  %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue
• But they might be here:  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue

On the system I'm looking at, the above folders, which happen to be empty, are in blue text, which means that any files in them are supposed to be compressed.

If you find your 12GB of files and have difficulty manually deleting them, it's likely to be a permissions problem.  Right-click on a file and select Properties, then take a look at the "Security" tab. 

Be careful when making changes here.  These system files/folders have some fairly esoteric permissions and properties, but the "Administrators" group should have "Full Control" permission, which means that a member of the Administrators group should be able to delete them.

If you have a problem other than permissions, post back with the complete text of the error message.

Answer 2

Thanks LemP.

I could access the other location you suggested (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue), and I found 2 folder with a total size of 6.5GB.

However, I could not delete them. Here is the message I get when I'm trying to delete them:

Thanks again for your help!

Answer 3

There are a few tricks you can use that may (or may not) enable you to delete these files.

• Open an Elevated Command Prompt window (click Start,type cmd.exe in the Search box, right-click on the link to cmd.exe and select "Run as administrator; respond as needed to the UAC prompt)
• Copy the following line, then right-click in the Command Prompt window and select Paste, then press Enter

    CD /D C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue

• Type the following command in the Command Prompt window and press Enter

   dir /x

• This should list those two folders.  It will also show the "short name" for each of the folders, which will be something like critic~1 and critic~2
• Leave the Command Prompt window open and start Task Manager (press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC), select the "Processes" tab, find and select explorer.exe and click "End Process".  Click "End Process" again on the popup "are you sure" box.  This will make all of your icons and the Taskbar disappear.  Don't worry.  Leave the Task Manager window open.
• Go back to the Command Prompt window, type the following and press Enter

     rd /s /q critic*

• If that doesn't work, please report the text of the error message
• Go back to Task Manager, click on File and then "New task (Run...)".  Type explorer.exe in the "Open" box and click OK.  Your icons and Taskbar will return

Let us know what happens.

Answer 4

Hi Lemp, 

When I typed: "rd /s /q critic* ", it told me: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.

When i typed the complete name of the folder, it showed me the following message:

Answer 5

Let's see if the following command in an Elevated Command Prompt window works:

rd \.c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\Critic~1.760 /s /q

or

rd \."c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\Critical_6.1.7601" /s /q

Note addition of " marks