No, this is not another sick perversion of mine. This is an interesting method of dealing with a WinXP (and possibly Win2K) glitch that has been annoying people for quite a while. Say you have a 700 MB video file that you've burnt to a CD and now you need to move, delete or rename it. You try deleting it and you get the "Error Deleting File or Folder" message which stubbornly says "Cannot delete X: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using this file and try again."
Now, some of us still keep Norton Commander on the hard drive, especially for occasions like these. And sometimes, good, old NC does the trick; but sometimes it doesn't. What do you do then? You don't want to reboot your machine because your P2P program has got a decent speed going and maybe you're ripping a DVD in addition...but drive space is running low - so you do it with a folder.
You create a folder in the same location the file in question resides, select both the folder and the file and delete them both. And it works! Sometimes the success of this operation depends on whether you right click on the folder or the file after you've selected them; sometimes, it takes a couple of times to succeed, but this definitely works. The same applies to moving big files and renaming them. Pretty spiffy no? No crazy solutions, no killing explorer, going into safe mode or the command console, just do it...with a folder. ;)
[P.S. Forget about all this bullshit; there is now a program that allows one to delete system-locked files cleanly and conveniently.]
Fukt.
Yeah yeah, go suck a knuckle, Linux boy. ;)
my solution: in a different directory, create empty file with same name, then paste it into directory from which you wanted to delete the file. It allows you to replace it! you can then delete the empty file, and you are done.
Interesting. But my solution also allows me to rename and move files, hehehe. Back to the stone age, eh? ;)
nice blog. and deep thoughts. i like it. :)
Cool. ;)
i tried many unsuccessful suggestions. when i came to this i thought what the heck i'll give it a shot. it worked the first time. thanks
Excellent. Now I know that my Windoze lore is not going to waste. Good man...or woman. Nah, my money is on man.
The folder trick did not work, but creating an emtpy file in another folder with same name and copying on top of the one that refuses to be deleted (despite reboot, etc) and then deleting it worked fine. Of course rebooting in safe mode and deleting the file also works, but that is a major drag. Thank for the tip! Does anybody have a clue of what is causing this problem and if there are some file handles stored in some obscure place that can be removed that would also help? The offending "lock" info must be stored somewhere on the disk since it persists pasts umpteen reboots.
Yeah, that suggestion Roman made works well too. I also sometimes CTRL+ALT+DEL, go into Task Manager and kill explorer.exe, then delete the offending file or folder. A little, very handy, application called Tray Manager remembers all my system tray icons after an Explorer kill, so it's not as painful as losing icons and not as annoying as rebooting.
I once read that this is yet another Windoze "feature" that helps the OS from going haywire in terms of file permissions, etc., but it seems to me that it's a) a Windoze NT thing (which Win2K and WinXP of course are) and b) happens most frequently with media files such as large .AVIs, because Windoze is really fucked up in terms of opening certain media types, even if you use third-party players.
Yeah, I tried to look for hidden or system files on the hard drive, but they are simply not there (if I missed something, do let me know). I think part of this problem sits in memory (hence why killing Explorer and rebooting works most of the time), and part of it is just in the fact that Windoze XP is an old, old OS now (4 years old! It's way out of date!). But no worries, Windoze Longhorn is coming soon, with all-new features, and bugs...and bug-"features," heh. ;)