is it possible to ruin your whole
computer by deleting just
one file in windows while it's running
could you possibly screw up that bad
even by accident
that's exactly what we're going to be
trying out in this video in real life
at a computer and i was actually curious
myself because i've done videos in the
past where
just for fun i would delete things like
the entire system 32 folder
or the entire windows registry and of
course that would ruin the computer but
i wanted to know if there was a single
file that was important enough where
deleting just that one
would render your computer useless and
it turns out as a little bit of a
spoiler it's a little bit more difficult
than i initially imagined
because windows has a lot of built-in
safeguards to save people from
themselves
but it is in fact possible so we're
going to go through the most important
files in windows
delete them and see what happens and
obviously i need to tell you guys don't
do this on your real computer or a
friend's computer i'm going to be doing
this in a virtual machine which will
behave exactly the same as a regular
computer
but doing this on your own computer
could ruin it even if it doesn't seem to
do it online just be aware that before
we get started i do want to thank the
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link in the description and now without
further ado let's get to the fun part of
trying to ruin
another computer so the first file that
i thought for sure would actually ruin
the computer
is the windows kernel file so the kernel
of windows and really any operating
system
is like the core file that kind of
interfaces
with all the drivers the hardware that
sort of thing it's like the core of the
operating system
and if you delete that it pretty much
should ruin the operating system and in
windows this file is known as
ntos kernel dot exe and is located right
in system 32. now because this is a core
system file
you'll probably notice if you look in
the system32 folder it will not appear
even if you do have hidden files and
folders enabled
in the file explorer so you actually
have to go in and change another setting
which is to uncheck hide protected
operating system files
and if you try to do this you will get a
warning it says you have chosen to
display protected operating system files
in file explorer
these files are required to start and
run windows deleting or editing
them will make your computer inoperable
are you sure you want to display these
files so obviously we do so we can
delete it
and then now you will notice that this
file does appear and
surprisingly the entire windows core
kernel file is only around
10 megabytes it's right there now
normally if you try to just go and
delete it there are some protections
that will prevent you from doing this to
save you from yourself
and it will warn you that this is
controlled by the trusted installer
system account so
instead we'll have to do is change the
ownership so you can delete the file
i'm not going to go through how to do
this whole process because it's a little
bit involved but if you really want to
know you can probably just look it up
yourself so anyway after we do that gain
control of the file
we can simply right click and delete it
and surprisingly
nothing actually happens noticeably i
assume this is because the file is
really only used
at startup and maybe in other situations
but for the most part it's not really
used while windows
is running so what we can do is simply
restart the computer and see what
happens
and of course as you can see it
immediately notices something is wrong
and it starts to automatically try and
repair the windows installation and to
my surprise
it actually was able to succeed it
simply repaired or replaced the file
and booted up like normally i thought
for sure that if the kernel was deleted
surely that would ruin the installation
but it turns out that's not the case
now if you didn't have some kind of
recovery partition
obviously that would probably be a
problem but it seems like it's pretty
easy to actually fix
a deleted kernel which i thought was the
most important file and that would
ruin it but no so then i was really
thinking man if deleting the windows
kernel can't ruin the computer
is there even anything so then i thought
about another one the windload.exe file
this file is known as the bootloader and
this actually
loads the kernel file and core device
drivers so this actually is loaded
before the kernel's loaded so i thought
maybe if i prevent windows from even
loading then it won't even be able to do
the repair
even if it tries to do it so i deleted
that file going through the same process
you have to take permission of it and
then right click and delete it
and then again nothing really happens
here until i restart because it's
only going to be activated during
windows restart so
i restart it and again windows does an
automatic repair
and again it actually succeeds so at
this point any normal person should
probably be happy that windows can
actually do a decent job of repairing
even some of the most important files
being deleted but right now i'm annoyed
because i want to ruin this computer
so the next one i tried is hal.dll this
is a critical
dll file which is known as the hardware
abstraction layer
and this is basically how the computer
connects the kernel
to the hardware like the cpu and the
chipset and stuff so then i was thinking
well maybe if i delete this then
again you know if the operating system
can't even connect to the chipset
then maybe it will fail to do the repair
but sure enough when i delete it
and restart it yes again this is able to
be completely repaired
using the automatic repair tool so next
i thought well you know what let's try
and go after the registry because i
remember in one of my old videos
i tried deleting a bunch of the registry
keys in the registry editor
and that did actually ruin everything so
what i did is went to the actual
registry file for the
system keys which is just called system
in system 32
but unfortunately i was not able to
actually delete this file
because it was in use and even after
trying several things
like trying to use the command prompt to
force windows to delete it it simply
would not
cooperate because it was just in use the
whole time so this doesn't really work
because while i am confident if you were
able to delete one of these videos it
would ruin the windows installation
it doesn't satisfy my requirement of
being able to delete one file
while windows is running so i can't
delete it while it's running so it's not
going to count
so finally i realized what had to be
done because windows was able to keep
accessing
the repair partition and all that to be
able to just
replace any missing files i would have
to do something that would prevent
windows from even starting up in the
first place
so it couldn't even get to the point of
trying to repair it so therefore
i realized i had to go after the boot
manager basically the boot manager
tells the computer what operating
systems are even installed
on the hard drive and boot manager if
you select
windows will then actually activate win
load which is the boot loader so the
boot manager actually happens before the
boot load so for example if you've ever
seen this screen which comes up if you
have multiple installations of windows
telling you which operating system you
want to boot from this
is the boot manager and then you select
it and then it boots into the operating
system so if we delete this
theoretically it shouldn't even be able
to load any operating systems at all now
in some cases apparently the boot
manager is located on the primary
installation partition of windows so
the c drive but in this case and i think
in most cases actually
it's actually located in the system
reserve partition
it which is created when you install
windows and this partition is normally
not even visible
if you go into the disk manager you will
see it's there but it will not have
a letter assigned to the drive so what
we can do is just
add a letter and assign it to drive so
we can access it through file explorer
and normally if you look in this folder
it will look completely empty because
these are all
hidden system files so again you do have
to enable file explorer to show
system files and hidden files and once
you do that you'll then see
that there are several important system
files in here including the file that's
just called
boot manager which is one of the very
first things that the computer even
looks at so no surprise this file is
also protected by trusted installer
so we take ownership of that just delete
it and now we can restart for the moment
of truth and sure enough
this time around it doesn't try to
repair windows we simply get the error
and operating system wasn't found try
disconnecting any drives that don't
contain an operating system
press control alt delete to restart so
now windows is unable to repair the
installation
because as far as the computer
understands there's not even a windows
installation to repair in the first
place
so it looks like we have succeeded we
have made the computer
unusable by deleting just one file it
took a little bit of work but we have
done it now is your computer technically
ruined beyond repair
well no not really because the windows
installation is still there all the
files are still there
it's just that the computer doesn't know
that it would take a little bit of extra
work but theoretically you could get a
windows installation disk
or repair disk and put it in it might be
able to auto detect and do a repair
or you might have to manually go through
and somehow rebuild
the boot manager so while i'm sure it is
possible to fix yes it would take some
work so anyway thanks again to
privacy.com for sponsoring this video
and again if you go to privacy.com
theojo
new users for a limited time are going
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hopefully you enjoyed this video if you
guys want to keep watching the next
video i'd recommend
is why you should never make in-app
purchases in smartphone apps
before watching this video because
you'll save a bunch of money and you'll
just have to watch it to see why but i
highly recommend it so thanks again for
watching guys and i'll see in the next
video