Help! Undeleteable file.

O

Oldwolf

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 23, 2004
Messages
437
I have an .avi that I just can't delete/remove.

I get the "this file is being used by another program" message when I try. And shortly thereafter the monitor goes black for a sec and when everything comes back, most of the items in my systray are gone! And XPpro and other programs runs godawful slow afterwards.

I've tried Norton SW(WinDoctor) and AV, also tried in Safemode and booting from a Win98se floppy, because my drives are FAT32. Also Spybot S&D and AdAware just for kicks and nothing!

So, short of reformatting my drive, which I don't wanna do! How can I get rid of it???

Thank you.
 
Hm... usually when that happens to me all I have to do is restart my computer, and then when I try to delete it again it usually works.
 
Can't. I tried that as well. This thing's worse than an Alabama leech in august!!!
 
Have 2 options that I can readily think of...

1. Boot into safe mode and try to delete it. Usually you can without a problem.

2. Download Process Explorer (FREE) and find out which program/process is using the file. You can do a search by DLL name or a string. (The name of your file if searching for string). It will bring up whichever app(s) are using that file and from that point, you can kill the program/process and then successfully delete your "undeleteable" file.
 
I tried option 1 and no joy. But I have option 2 downloaded and will try it.

TY bigtime!
 
Good to know that one of the solutions worked.

Those damn pr0n .avi's will get you every time. :D
 
l337zax said:
Good to know that one of the solutions worked.

Those damn pr0n .avi's will get you every time. :D
Click to expand...

There is also the concept that you could, say.. get yourself a bootable os cd (knoppix, linspire live..) boot that, and then find and delete file..

I do that for the ever annoying "System Volume Information" folder that sometimes refuses to clear when I turn it off on a client repair computer.
 
Malogato said:
There is also the concept that you could, say.. get yourself a bootable os cd (knoppix, linspire live..) boot that, and then find and delete file..

I do that for the ever annoying "System Volume Information" folder that sometimes refuses to clear when I turn it off on a client repair computer.
Click to expand...

only problem here is last I heard there was still very little NTFS support for linux, mostly read-only.
what I'd do is go into recovery console off a windows XP CD and delete through DOS.

Peace
 
And yet neither of you noticed that I posted, that the drive was FAT32. Not NTFS or Linux.
 
Oldwolf said:
And yet neither of you noticed that I posted, that the drive was FAT32. Not NTFS or Linux.
Click to expand...


What's this "neither of you" stuff?

did *I* say anything about ntfs?

Nopers.. not that I can see.

It doesn't matter that it's NOT linux.
Linspire & knoppix both support reads, and writes, to fat32.


Also, I only gave linspire & knoppix as examples.
A win98-se boot (install) cd (which fully supports FAT32.....BTW.. or it wouldn't be able to install it, now would it?) would be just as valid in my example.

The reason I mentioned the linspire live / knoppix was because it would give you a "mousable" gui instead of "dos" or "linux shell"
 
Oldwolf said:
And yet neither of you noticed that I posted, that the drive was FAT32. Not NTFS or Linux.
Click to expand...

Yeah my bad I didn't notice that. though my solution still stands about going into recovery console, so there :p

and yeah, knoppix would work too.

peace
 
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