Don't Delete System 32

[Circle Christ]

Delete System32

Part of a series on Windows. [View Related Entries]

Updated Mar 30, 2016

Delete System32 is a popular trolling scheme used to hoax inexperienced PC users into deleting the Windows system directory called System32. It is essential to the running of Windows OS and without it, the computer would not work at all.
Origin

The System32 file originally appeared in Windows 2000[1]. As a trolling scheme, System32 is typically presented as a virus and instructions are given on how to delete it without prompting a warning message.


I saw something on the site that got me curious. Hope this helps others who may be so too.

 

[Cute Tink]

Yikes!

 

[skalle]

Notice my signature. I've seen this around the Internet, and while I personally find it amusing, it certainly is not amusing that the less computer-savvy out there take things like this seriously and render their OS inoperable. My dad deleted a bunch of .dlls once, thinking they were viruses, and he couldn't figure out why his computer wouldn't boot until I told him what he had done. I got all his data off the disk with a live Linux distro on a USB drive, and I had to reinstall Windows and hunt down the licenses for his software. Some people aren't lucky enough to have people around who can do this stuff for them, and that is a shame.

Moral of the story: be very, very careful when playing with things you don't understand on your computer....

 

[Andrew hales]

You shouldn't delete them, as they are directly related to your OS and may corrupt your Operating system, which will start with a lot of prompt messages saying "blah blah file is missing" , this missing, that missing and so on..