What If You Delete the 'Program Files' Folder in Windows?

Would deleting Program Files DESTROY your computer?

▼ Time Stamps: ▼
0:00 - Intro
0:37 - What's Actually In Those Folders?
3:17 - Deleting Program Files
4:52 - Deleting Program Files (x86)
6:02 - Deleting ProgramData
7:01 - Some Stuff is Already Broken
7:32 - Deleting More That Remains
8:47 - Windows is Officially Broken
10:52 - Can It Be Fixed?
12:20 - Trying One Last Thing
13:17 - Discussion & Thoughts

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[CGKayy]

'We've literally broken Windows so bad that it downgraded itself to a previous version.' This is why i love this channel

[hwdrlkh]

As someone who likes captions on videos, I really appreciate that you made proper captions for the video, really makes it easier to watch. Especially in loud environments or on places I'd rather not have my phone making noise. Thank you ThioJoe!

[freezinfire]

Fun fact, when I first got my laptop from hp retailer it said that it came pre installed with windows 11, but it was exactly like how you showed windows 10 with the windows 10 start and explorer. After I updated it went back to normal but it was a wild out of the box experience for me, because the setup process was exactly like windows 11 but with broken stuff lying around.

[O_Kikiwi]

The part where Windows starts reverting itself up to 10 is the funniest part of it all 🤣🤣

[codrutx]

You can also get the Windows 10 Explorer in Windows 11 by opening the control panel and then navigating to a folder from there

[_SJ]

I need to wake up at 5 a.m., but a ThioJoe video is more important.

[michaelchen]

TaskManager was built to run, even if the windows Shell (root process) is not running. It's a fail-safe. That's why it always starts.

[anon_y_mousse]

In a way, it's kind of cool that Windows tries to protect itself so the user doesn't just bork their system. On Linux, a user with sudo permissions is really dangerous because they can just rm -rf / and bork the system with ease. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that on Linux you're free to do with your system as you please, but I feel like some more protection against malicious users and programs *by default* would be nice.

[raphaelmateusdasneves]

Also 2, Windows 11 is not just built on 10, it is Windows 10 with a new GUI. Or technically they all are Windows NT 4.0 from 1996. They expanded on features and made new GUIs but in the kernel, you'll find DOS era code and what was built upon. They started from scratch for NT but still used their old code to look up stuff, repeating some past mistakes. Most of the code is not capable of using modern CPU and language features. Also a lot of applications are the exact same as in previous versions, compiled again. So you basically just deleted one layer of skins on the explorer. That's also the reason you can open the settings you know from Windows XP.

[deweywsu]

I thought this was going to be cheesy "look how messed up it is" type of comedy video when I saw the title, but it turned out to be really interesting and way more in-depth than I expected. I liked the step by step explanation of the problem solving to try to correct the errors seen. Nice video!

[X-Records]

Good thing you didn’t broke it further otherwise it would have reverted back to Windows XP 😂

[EarthrealmWarrior]

Something i would never mess with but its definitely interesting to watch windows just break like that

[vedanshchn]

I tried deleting apps this way but I guess due to registeries, the apps still showed up in the Programs and features panel :/

[alyss]

idk why i thought windows 11 was entirely separate from windows 10, i was genuinely surprised when it actually reverted back to the windows 10 taskbar and explorer, it's interesting to me how all windows versions are just build upon older versions and not entirely new

[iron_pickaxe]

Try deleting all environment variables. I did that recently without thinking about it too much, made the computer unusable and took me a while to fix haha

[joaquingomezullrich]

This is a good example of how windows 11 has UWP apps heavily integrated in the system. Even the right click menu is actually an app, so thats why you couldnt even right click. The real apps (like win10 explorer, taskmngr, notepad, etc) are either in System32 or elsewhere in the Windosws folder (as it should be, as they are actually part of the OS) and they seem to be set as some kind of fallback if the UWP ones fail, so thats why it started reverting.

[krisr]

Windows is more robust than I would have thought. And I also learned about some tools that I really should have known about previously. Have a well-earned like

[bubbajames]

Windows 11: Dad! Help! This guy is beating the hell out of me!
Windows 10: I'm coming, son!

[timothystevenhoward]

Just reminds me of how often we had to reinstall windows back in the day. You get to a point where you knew reformatting was the easy way out.

[lordpuff]

I think you could do a video combining everything you have done so far, and delete as many files from windows as possible without it completely crashing. Would be fun to see what would happen then