Deleting large folders with multiple thousands of files using Windows Explorer can take a very long time.

Command prompt usually provides faster results, but depending on what command(s) were used it can still take quite a long time. After some experimenting, I found that the following way is the fastest one:

• Open command prompt (cmd.exe) and navigate to the folder in question.
• Run the following two commands:
  • DEL /F/Q/S folder_to_delete > nul
    Deletes all files
  • RMDIR /Q/S folder_to_delete
    Deletes remaining folder structure.