Remember needing Cygwin back in the day, but after using it to my only occasion forgot the software-libraries completely? That happened to me. I have installed Windows 7 again, and found my C:\cygwin folder with all the files. Wanted to get rid of it, but no way – a mysterious “permission denied” when deleting the files. It seems there’s no way to remove it. Cygwin protects the files with some security stuff. That’s just idiotic, having no access to my own files!

I’m always logged in as native Administrator – no other users present. What I tried next was to navigate to that folder through my Linux machine (cifs mounted filesystem), but got “permission denied” error there as well, even with the magic command:

sudo rm -rf /media/windows/cygwin

Here’s how to remove Cygwin once and for all.

You will need

• Cygwin
• cmd.exe
• 2 minutes

Run cmd, navigate to C:\ (or other disk, if you have installed it in different path).

This command takes ownership recursive of the folder, without asking anything:

takeown /r /d y /f cygwin

This command gives Full Access to Everyone recursively in the folder:

icacls cygwin /t /grant Everyone:F

And finally, the command which deletes it all and removes Cygwin:

rmdir /s /q cygwin

Good bye Cygwin!