[Fineus]

Hey all, trying to delete a file and whenever I do I get this:

Any thoughts on how to force its deletion? I have no idea what's using it (tried restarting in safe mode to delete it - again no luck).

[Setekh]

Tried opening up a DOS prompt and deleting it manually?

Run taskmgr and make sure nothing's scanning your folders/indexing your HD, then open a prompt, find your directory (maybe rename it to something more manageable first ), and use the 'deltree' command (or the 'rd' one, but I forget what letter is before d) to get rid of it. It's worked for me before.

[Fury]

That happens when Win is trying to read file info. For example, when you click on an avi file (clicking is enough, not opening) XP is trying to read file info. Go to Start menu > Run > Browse and delete the file that way. If XP can't get the file info, it will just keep trying, making it impossible to delete the file. Command propmpt or Start > Run > Browse should do the trick howewer.

If this tends to happen especially with avi files, you can disable this feature in WinXP.
1. Open up regedit
2. Goto HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
3. Delete the "Default" value which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}"

[Ashrak]

pssst 3 first letters and ~1 should do the trick too

[IceFire]

Pretty Longhorn like skin

[Fineus]

Cheers guys, still no luck unfortunately The file is a .exe by the way...

[Setekh]

An exe? W3rd... What error does DOS give you when you try to delete it?

[kasperl]

disable KaZaA and other sharers, that might help.

NTFS or FAT?

[StratComm]

If you're really determined, open up the task manager and kill everything that doesn't absolutely need to be running.  My guess is that the file in question has a hook in some quickstart application that always keeps it referenced in memory, even if it doesn't actually have the program open.  Of course, the program itself may have incorrectly closed as well.

Or alternatively, boot into safe mode.  That should let you delete it.

[Stryke 9]

Kill processes. If you can't find the one that's being annoying right off the bat, do so indiscriminately. If you don't know which ones are vital to keeping your system running... well, you'll find out pretty quickly.

[Stealth]

just opening DOS and trying to delete it from there might not work, i'd say reboot in DOS mode and then delete it...

but XP doesn't have a 'boot in dos mode' does it :-/ (i'm not familiar with XP at all)

[Lightspeed]

XP isn't based on DOS, so you cannot delete that from a DOS mode or something. The "DOS"-Prompt is no DOS either. Its simply an interface of XP, also deleting it from any other systems (DOS bootdisk, etc) will not be possible since XP uses the NTFS filesystem and therefore is not accessable by FAT Operating Systems (like Win98, DOS, WinME, etc). Linux supports writing to NTFS, but tends to kill the whole harddrive when doing so (its still VERY experimental ).

It looks like a corrupt thingy in your filesystem. Try running something à la ScanDisk and hope it goes away (since i doubt the file is being used, i think its some ghost or something).

[Drew]

or an off chance its being used by a malicious program or sumthing, like a trojan......

[Ulala]

This is a longshot, but it's worked for me before... well soemtimes. Change the extension of the file to something ludicrious so Windows can't begin to do anything with it, so it just sits there. Restart your computer so all "use" of the program is wiped, then try deleting it. Probably won't work, but it's worth a try. It's worked a few times for me.

[Hippo]

Move it to a flopy disk (unless its a new computer and doesn't have a flopy drive ) then destroy the disk... it has to move it though, not just copy it...

[Bobboau]

can you rename it?

[an0n]

I got all this "Cannot access" **** with my 'legitimate back-up' of T3.

For like a month it was sucking 700mb of HD and I couldn't open, move, rename or delete it.

I tried Safe-Mode, DOS, killing all processes, removing **** from the registry.......everything. And nothing worked.

Then one day it just let me do it. Never did find out why it'd tried to block me.

[Fury]

It could also be your anti-virus software scanning or trying to scan the file, disable the a-v and try again.

[Fineus]

Now that's scary... I just had the exact same experience as an0n, it let me delete the file. End of story. I didn't even do anything special to the system.

Bloody Windows.... ah well, cheers for the suggestions guys - seems all I needed was patience

[Razor]

Descent Full install eh? Hmmm sounds very Kazzy like to me.

You know what you could do. Get a program called Tune Up utilities 2003  It has a shreader utility that completely deletes files. It should help ya out.
Cheers.

Or look into services and see what program is using it, shut it down and try SHIFT DELETE