shutil.rmtree fails on Windows with 'Access is denied'

Check this question out: What user do python scripts run as in windows?

Apparently the answer is to change the file/folder to not be read-only and then remove it.

Here's onerror() handler from pathutils.py mentioned by @Sridhar Ratnakumar in comments:

def onerror(func, path, exc_info):
    """
    Error handler for ``shutil.rmtree``.

    If the error is due to an access error (read only file)
    it attempts to add write permission and then retries.

    If the error is for another reason it re-raises the error.
    
    Usage : ``shutil.rmtree(path, onerror=onerror)``
    """
    import stat
    # Is the error an access error?
    if not os.access(path, os.W_OK):
        os.chmod(path, stat.S_IWUSR)
        func(path)
    else:
        raise

Well, the marked solution did not work for me... did this instead:

os.system('rmdir /S /Q "{}"'.format(directory))

I'd say implement your own rmtree with os.walk that ensures access by using os.chmod on each file before trying to delete it.

Something like this (untested):

import os
import stat

def rmtree(top):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):
        for name in files:
            filename = os.path.join(root, name)
            os.chmod(filename, stat.S_IWUSR)
            os.remove(filename)
        for name in dirs:
            os.rmdir(os.path.join(root, name))
    os.rmdir(top)