Q:

Windows 10 deleted folders keep reappearing

Since last week my Windows 10 refuses to delete folders, regardless of the location. When I shift-delete a folder (or multiple folders), it disappears but after refreshing the folder it's there again. This even occurs when using rmdir through the commandline and when using cut/paste to move the folder.
When I then try to access that 'deleted' folder I get an 'Access denied' error. I then have to restart explorer.exe  for the folders to completely disappear.
After a reboot this problem still persists. When deleting to Recycle Bin this issue does not occur.
Anyone ever experiences this odd behaviour & have a fix for it? I don't want to have to restart explorer.exe everytime I delete a folder.

A:

Running a Process Monitor trace might help find what's happening when you try to delete that folder.

Download and run Process Monitor.
Press Ctrl + L to access the filter dialog.
Configure the filter as in this image:

(Replace foldername with the actual folder name.)

Click OK. ProcMon would start capturing events.
Ctrl + X to clear the existing events.
Open File Explorer and delete the folder (which you said is reappearing automatically.)
Wait until the deleted folder reappears. Once it does, immediately switch to Procmon window, and stop capturing events by pressing Ctrl + E.
Folder creation/deletion events would be listed there along with the Results of each event. You can see which process is recreating the folder, or if the folder was successfully deleted or not, in the first place.
If you can't make anything from the log, save the log to a .PML file with All Events selected.
Zip the file and upload to your cloud storage account like OneDrive, Dropbox etc. Compressing the file reduces the PML log size by 90%. Share us the link to the log file.

