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School Technicians: Have you tried turning it on and off?

Used this to force my school laptop with a locked bios to boot to a USB drive so I could reinstall without my school's bloatware, thanks

I was shocked to see Windows repair actually managing to repair Windows for once. That's insanely rare.

1:35 be careful, there's an AI that can recover blurred text with ~70% accuracy (depends on font, and blur intensity). Just use solid-color bars to be 100% safe

Thanos : I am inevitable Windows : *Hold my repair system ¬‿¬*

Me: *_Sees Winload.exe_* Me: I fear no man But that THING... (Error: Winload.exe not found) It Scares me.

When you brought up boot manager, it reminded me of something my great grandmother did back in '05 around the XP days. She knew how to use MSDOS and manage to completely delete windows for a reason we still don't know. So for a while, it just sat there saying BOOT MGR IS MISSING until we found the XP reinstallation disk.

ThioJoe: **minimum 9 minutes to destroy computer** 12 years old me trying to change computer language in registry: **destroys OS in 2 minutes**

Geez, the automatic repair is a *beast.* Never again will I underestimate its power.

Thio: *Deletes the file that connects the hardware with the operating system* Operating System: "I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that"

ThioJoe: If you were able to delete one of these vid- KZfaq: This video is no longer available!

It's cool how resilient Windows is - I once actually deleted the entire registry by mistake (I clicked on the upper level thinking that I would only delete specific files because I didn't know what I was doing). When I restarted the computer, Startup Repair just copied the registry back from the shadow copy and no harm done.

Windows: Hello Karen: I want your boot manager

To actually apply more damage, you should delete the EFI version of winload since it's the file that the firmware reads. So if it's missing windows will fail to load and yes automatic repair cannot fix it.

Interesting topic! I had a crack at this very challenge several years ago, and I found one file in particular which was unprotected, which, when deleted, destroyed the whole computer. That file was "MFC42.dll". I think it was on an XP build. I think they've since fixed this issue!!!

"These files are required to start and run Windows. Deleting or editing them can make your computer inoperable. Are you sure you want to display these files?" "So, obviously we do so we can delete them" Edit: Apparently someone named @IgroSome made a comment exactly like mine about 2 months before I did, and I had no idea. Sorry about that, @IgroSome!

4:00, first time I've seen startup repair actually do anything.

"Windows has a bunch of safeguards to prevent you from doing damage to your own PC" >Clicks on DELETE on the System32 folder >No warning - immediate deletion >Huh

Hey! I know another way to destroy your computer. Download the latest Windows Canary build. Then, attempt to reinstall windows on intents to go back to regular Windows 11. Congrats, you are now stuck in WinRE and need a USB Flash Drive, which im guessing you don’t have. Your hard disk drive is probably now corrupted. This was based on experience, do not try this at home, im serious!!

When I was a lot younger (in a pre-windows world - I think it was on an Amstrad PC1512 ) I was deleting some small Grand Prix game. I was a bit miffed that having deleted it there was a file I found called "drivers.ini". Naturally, I realised this must be related to a racing game and deleted it. Computer wouldn't boot up properly after that.

Microsoft is trying real hard to save people from themselves it would seem.

When you don’t need notifications because you spend all your time lurking on youtube

Windows is basically an axolotl: it can regrow/repair any part of itself. Also, you could just delete the C: drive in software. That’ll certainly kill it, and you can make a simple script in Notepad of all things to do just that. Easy as pie.

Hi, If you ever have problems deleting a file, you can use a Program called Process Hacker. There is an addon for it called "run as Trusted installer". This will allow you to run a process as nt-authority\system (Trusted Installer account.) This should allow you to delete anything.

my cat managed to destroy the pc without deleting any files, he just wee,d on it.

Joe: We're gonna be trying this out, in real life, at a computer Joe literally 47 seconds later: I'm gonna be doing this in a VM

Bravo..I was using the mic to do a search for whatever reason I winded up on your video loved it

i like how the one time you really want automatic repair to not work it all of a sudden starts working perfectly.

“Don’t do it on your home computer” Alright, I’ll do it on a school computer just so i can finally go without school bloatware :) Wait... why do I hear boss music? Eh forget it. Les delete the windows OOBE y e s Ok let’s get outta here-

"Can You DESTROY Your Computer by Deleting ONE File?" No. Files live on filesystems, so the most you could "DESTROY" by removing a file is the ability of the OS to run. That may be a problem if you're not competent to restore the file. If you remove a file that can modify the filesystem, you could in theory damage the filesystem, but in practice you'll not be able to delete a file that uses itself to perform the deletion because that file will then be open. The ntoskrnl.exe file is _not_ the Windows kernel, it's just one of several files that make up the complete OS kernel. Device drivers are kernel objects too, as are the DLLs that ntoskrnl.exe calls. In later versions of Windows, there's a hidden cache of OS files, and if you delete one while the OS is running, it will just replace it with a copy.

Back in the early 90s I deleted autoexec.bat and config.sys from my brand new, first pc. That brainstorm forced me onto the path of being a savvy user.

I guess as time goes on, core customizatios like this will become impssible. Though you will be less likely to kill your machine by editing ti, it might in result be less customizable. I really wonder what the future of pc's will be like.

ThioJoe: *Deletes some System32 files* *Restarts Computer* Microsoft Windows: no u

Yes. Create a shortcut to "This PC", and move it to the recycle bin. Empty it.

There is so much stuff going on in the background. Fascinating even after more than 25 years of using computers since I was a child. :D

dood you helped me big time, im tge kind of guy whos peranoid about everything. glad to know important files are super protected

"Are you sure you want to show these system files? Because editing them can make your computer inoperable." "Obviously we do because we want to delete them" GETS ME EVERY TIME XXD

I'm so glad you mentioned the Windows installation disk at the end. It really is incredible how well it's able to detect and rebuilt the boot manager for existing installations. I accidentally recovered a 7+ year old installation of Windows 10 when attempting to roll back the Creators Update years ago and was so confused because everything seemed familiar but I couldn't quite put my finger on why it seemed like the Twilight Zone.

I remember doing this on windows XP when I first took interest in IT. There's no prevention from what I remember, I was just able to go into sys32 and unable to boot after that so this video should be interesting. No better way to learn than doing in my opinion

Many of these files are hard linked in the WinSxS (side-by-side) directory. Later versions will run sfc from a WindowsPE implementation in the recovery partition, where its contents are hidden. Installing Windows 7/10 etc.. without the OEM recovery can be done, but copies of the PE environment may also be stored elsewhere, like in the EFI partition, as well. Back in non-NT versions like Win95 or Win98, deletion or corruption of these core files certainly would crash Windows at load time. Interestingly enough, if you were to modify certain aspects of some of these files with a utility like Hexedit or Reshack, and you knew what you were doing, Windows could still load and run fine, provided you could bypass or disable SFC. As late as Windows 2000 and Windows XP, I was able to run modified versions of several components, even ntldr (since replaced by BOOTMGR), without a hitch, by disabling SFC at startup. Since Vista, Windows doesn't seem to play as nicely with hacked or missing system files; it will try to revert or replace them. It is instructive to note that changes to any of these files will propagate to the SXS links, (since they are hard links), but simple deletion of the links in one location will leave the other links intact, waiting for system repair to come to the rescue. Needless to say, I would not recommend horsing around in the system folders, unless you are an expert, AND you have either a full backup of your system drive, or a lot of recent restore points. You may just end up doing a clean install after only one silly mistake.

5:20 - hal.dll made me think of: "Open the pod bay doors, HAL" "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" (2001: A Space Odyssey)

0:08 "we're gonna try this out in real life" Wow that's good to know.

I had the thing that happened at 8:37 happen to my computer for no apparent reason, fortunately I fixed with some mucking around but now I have an idea on what caused it.

0:00 your blur backrgound filter is going nutz on monitors

0:03 this is the best image ive ever seen

Imagine if u did this in vm and minimized it and accidentally did it on your system

i always imagine that windows is a giant spaceship gliding across an infinite landscape and it's gigantic and filled with different people that do different things and when thiojoe deletes a file, one of the people disappears from existence when the os stops working, the spaceship loses its height and ends up crashing face-first into the ground, creating a huge mound of dirt in front of it and then there's a fast-forward that shows someone looking at the big spaceship that's now covered in moss and metal plates are falling off also that repair feature actually did something holy crap

I thought that in the Hal file, you would have found game files. Like Kirby, Smash Bros, and Earthbound.

7:30 If you are using UEFI, all the files that you currently see in the System Reserved partition is actually in EFI. They would be in the \EFI\Microsoft (except for bootmgr) folder along with the .efi that is used to load the boot manager which is what you deleted.

Perfect video For Who needs to destroy there school PC's

Ya know, I assumed that was the file you needed to delete. I am glad you went through your thought process though

i remember years ago on my win7 machine when hal.dll got somehow corrupted, it was pretty much dead for me. glad to see win10 able to restore these important files

Man I really love your channel and the work put into making this!

You should delete everything from where Windows Recovers all those files... That would surely do the work...

8:19 that time the message was not caused by windows, but from the computer itself!

Thio: therefore protecting your banking and identity info. *Meanwhile he’s showing his cards on screen*

“Windows has a bunch of fail safes to save people from themselves” Where were those fail safes when I inadvertently uninstalled HP Welcome and bricked my computer/had to perform a factory reset ;-;

*Sponsor Skip:* 1:59

"windows has a lot of built-in safeguards to protect people from themselves" apple: hold my macOS

2:40 you can also go into task manager, then find “system”, then click file location and you can see it in win explorer

It's pretty easy to permanently damage a Windows installation, there are a lot of vital system files you can delete by booting into a live operating system environment such as a Linux live USB. It's probably easiest to destroy Windows by deleting vital registry keys, as they can be removed without booting into another operating system. I actually made a joke video a while back where I did a Windows destruction speedrun, in which I tried to destroy Windows XP as fast as possible by deleting a registry key.

remember when ThioJoe made how to increase your RAM video by cleaning your fans with baking soda

Wow this video has so much useful information. And I like the fact that you are doing all of this just because to see if it is possible. 😂 Would love to see a video on how to delete WBM after formating disk partitions in Windows installation menu, because I can't find anything on that topic anywhere and it still shows in BIOS. 😏

On some old versions of Windows you can rename the windows folder, If you do and restart Windows won't start. You can rerename it back to Windows and then it's back to normal.

ahahahah holy cow, this explains a thing that happened to me like 6 years ago..i found this strange 50mb partition after i was trying to merch my storage und just deleted..and yup...haha miracle solved. thanks mate

You can indeed reinstall the boot manager without losing any OS data but it is a bit funky. I had to do it recently and it basically involves booting into an install disk but choosing repair instead of install and doing some command prompt stuff

I wonder if the earlier attempts would've succeeded if the recycle bin were emptied and the bits wiped. Perhaps windows was able to recover the file since it's still on the disk.

Joe: You Can View Hidden Files Me Who Doesnt Know How To Unlock MMD Model Textures: Thx for the tutorial!

Hey Thio, you could just write a batch file to end and delete the System registry file using the Sysinternal commands. Regular kill command won't work, so you'll have to use pskill instead.

0:48 ThioJoe : Don't do this on ur real computer or ur friends computer School Computer : why da fucc are glaring at me like that **Sensing of danger**

I used to love trying to convince my mother to have a go on my computer, say to right a letter. She used to say that she was afraid to break it...

damn im never this early, not even in school

It's actually really simple to repair. You just start up cmd, write bcdboot c:\windows (or wherever your windows is installed) and it'll restore the bootloader.

Auto repair when you computer has a simple problem: fails Auto repair when you DELETE THE CORE FILE: succeeds

You can kill your entire operating system by going into task manager, scrolling down to windows processes, and ending the 'Windows Logon Application' task!

There is also hal.dll, which makes it go into system repair.

Id highly recommend deleting logon.exe

When I was 10 (2010) I tried to dual-boot Ubuntu, and I have no idea how but hal.dll got deleted and Windows couldn't boot anymore. I was legitimately shocked to see it repair itself from that. I guess the recovery stuff has improved since then.

Joe youre a crazy guy!! Im glad that windows has all those safeguards in place!

ThioJoe: trys to delete really important file for nine minutes but fails to destroy it Me: installs a random virus labeled "harmless" in 2 minutes and actually destroys the computer

Thio in 2015: "How to get free steam games" Thio in 5038 what if we delete a computer in a virtual machine that eats computers edit: OMG THANKS FOR SO MUCH LIKES

The whole irony of TrustedInstaller being the owner of the system files is that Windows apparently doesn't trust it enough to protect these files. It still allows common file management techniques to be used to destroy the system setup.

6:05 May Can be deleted in a mode (that I don’t remember now) but that mode try to make the less errors possible, and can delete some files while is in use. (Is obvious needs permissions)

I managed to somehow get my laptop stuck in a boot loop just by ending a non-critical process in task manager

As an IT geek, this is the first time I see "Windows Automatic Repair" did something useful! Usually when I mess with my system, it fails to fix it 😂

A few years ago I did this on accident. I was dualbooting linux and windows 10, I didn't have problems until I wanted to remove the linux partician and just have windows again. I somehow deleted the bootloader while removing linux from the system. I put my windows USB in and tried to repair the issue, but I got frustrated after hours of trying to repair it, and just formatted and reinstalled windows fresh. Luckily I had back ups of everything.

random thing basically everybody when something stops responding: _i’d like to speak with the task manager_

Hi there Mr. Thiojoe can you make us a video on how to build your own PC? thanks a lot. I watch all of your vids its very informative and good demonstrative.

In Linux it's very easy. Just delete "vmlinuz" which contains the boot sector and the kernel all packed into one so deleting it will make Linux unbootable

i never realized how good windows is at fixing itself

You all a genius Joe you know many. Staffs.

The system admin user that the kernel is controlled by: Do I look like I care? Honestly you can delete it

Joe:dont try this Also joe: shows steps how to do it

At around 3:50, you said that the "ntoskrnl.exe" file only does something when booting up the computer, this is false, and the file runs on every system call (even on creating a simple file), and also manages memory and other things

well once I moved some files and then got into trouble, windows wasn't happy ... after a few replacement it just worked back again... Basically the screen went blank and then restarted a few times too, well that's a nightmare ofcourse XD

Windows vs ThioJoe . Everybattle Windows won. ThioJoe win at end

Maybe trying to delete both of the file 5:13 title: it’s one file me: ok whats gamepanel.exe in system32

I bought an EuroPc back in the eighties, attached a 20Mb HD to it via a lot of soldering flat-cables, learned how to (not) program in C. And made a DIY File Explorer and entered 'RUN', a second later the disk was blank, so I destroyed my PC deleting ONE HD.. :)

Deleting bootmgr was the first thing I thougth. I already did that years ago while messing around with Linux and trying to make a dual boot config. Nowadays it is automatically done, but this was not the case at the tine. I could even manage to make WINDOWS XP loader to show my Linux system and let me choose it at boot. I did it just for fun.