I don't use Windows as my main OS any more, but still do use it regularly enough to test out libraries I work on. One thing I regularly find frustrating is trying to remove a large folder. Using Explorer always seems to be slow, and I'd prefer to use the command-line anyways. On a Unix machine a simple rm -rf folder/ does the trick.
rmdir
The answer you'll typically see in StackOverflow answers is to use rmdir, specifically:
rmdir /s /q folder
The /s makes it be recursive and /q makes it be quiet. This will still fail when there are large file names, something you often see with Node projects. Usually at this point I give up and open an Explorer window in Adminstrative Mode and delete it that way.
rimraf
I had long since accepted my fate when I learned that rimraf, a Node module I already use, can be installed as a global and used to remove anything at all:
npm install -g rimraf
Then to use:
rimraf folder/
I haven't tried to compare it with rmdir in terms of speed, but it feels fairly fast to me. Even if it's a bit slower, the fact that it seems to "just work" without getting errors for long file names or anything else, is enough for me.