How to solve “The directory is not empty” error when running rmdir command in a batch script?

Question

I am making a batch script and part of the script is trying to remove a directory and all of its sub-directories. I am getting an intermittent error about a sub-directory not be

Answer 1

Windows sometimes is "broken by design", so you need to create an empty folder, and then mirror the "broken folder" with an "empty folder" with backup mode.

robocopy - cmd copy utility

/copyall - copies everything
/mir deletes item if there is no such item in source a.k.a mirrors source with
destination
/b works around premissions shenanigans

Create en empty dir like this:

mkdir empty

overwrite broken folder with empty like this:

robocopy /copyall /mir /b empty broken

and then delete that folder

rd broken /s
rd empty /s

If this does not help, try restarting in "recovery mode with command prompt" by holding shift when clicking restart and trying to run these command again in recovery mode