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c#user-profiledirectory.delete
John Wesley Gordon
John Wesley Gordon

Reputation: 910

c# delete user profile

I am trying to use c# to delete a user profile on a remote server. I am running the program as myself. If I browse to \\server\c$\Users\ as myself I can delete the directory "User". It gives no error. If I use my program written in C# with the code below to attempt to delete the same directory I get back this exception.

Access to the path 'appsFolder.itemdata-ms' is denied.

Am I doing something wrong with my delete?

Directory.Delete("\\\\server\\c$\\Users\\User\\",true);

Upvotes: 0

Views: 4782

Answers (2)

Christian Casutt
Christian Casutt

Reputation: 2423

Deleting a user profile folder without cleaning the registry accordingly can lead to several undesired side-effects like temporary profile creation etc. I recommend using DeleteProfile function which can be found in userenv.dll.

My code is as follow:

internal class Program
{
    [DllImport("userenv.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling = false, SetLastError = true)]
    public static extern bool DeleteProfile(string sidString, string profilePath, string omputerName);

    private static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        try
        {
            var username = args[0];
            var principalContext = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain); // Domain => to support local user this should be changed probably, didn't test yet
            var userPrincipal = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(principalContext, username);
            if (userPrincipal != null)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("User found");
                var userSid = userPrincipal.Sid;
                Console.WriteLine("User {0} has SID: {1}", username, userSid);
                Console.WriteLine("Will try to DeleteProfile next..");
                DeleteProfile(userSid.ToString(), null, null);
                Console.WriteLine("Done - bye!");
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("ERROR! User: {0} not found!", username);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception exception)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(exception);   
        }
    }
}

Consider, this code is just for demonstration purpose and should be stabilized for production.

Read more on MSDN.

Upvotes: 6

Sumit
Sumit

Reputation: 34

Hi I was trying to same thing and found Directory.Delete() cannot delete files if file is Hidden or a system file.

Using cmd instead to delete folder.

   public static FileAttributes RemoveAttribute (FileAttributes att, FileAttributes attToRemove)
   {
        return att &  ~attToRemove;
    }

public void DeleteProfileFolder(string file)
 {
    Process process = new Process();
    ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
    startInfo.WindowStyle = ProvessWindowsStyle.Hiddenl
    startInfo.FileName = "cmd";
    startInfo.Arguments = "/C rd /S /Q  \"" + file + "\"";
    process.StartInfo = startInfo;
   process.Start();
   process.WaitForExit();
}

public void Deletes(DirectoryInfo baseDir)
{  
     if(! baseDir.Exists)
       return;
   var Dirs = Directory.EnumerateDirectories(baseDir.ToString(),"*.*",SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);
   var files = Directory.EnumerateFiles(baseDir.ToString(),"*.*",SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);

   foreach(var dir in Dirs)
   {
         DeleteProfileFolder(dir);
    } 
  foreach(var file in files)
 {
      FileAttributes att = File.GetAttributes(f);
      if((att & FileAttributes.Hidden) == FileAttribute.Hidden)
      {  
            att = RemoveAttribute(att, FileAttributes.Hidden);
            File.SetAttributes(file , att);
            File.SetAttributes(File, FileAttributes.Normal)
        }
   File.Delete(file);
  }

}

To call This

Deletes("c:\Users\"); // did this on local system.

I havn't tried on network location but I thing this will work.

Note: To completely delete userProfile we also need to delete registry.

Upvotes: 1

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