Unable to delete file

[Terry]

Sometimes I just can't friggin delete a file. (mostly .avi)

When I try to delte it, it says it is being "used by another person or program"

I have restarted the computer and stuff like that, trying to look for weird processes that might still be using the file, but with no luck.

I also tried Norton's Wipe Info.
That didn't work either.

??

edit: are there utilities out there that will tell me what programs are accessing the file?

edit2: ok, I ran the Wipe Info again and it worked.
But what was the reason? Any insights?

[bromide]

sometimes if it is an imcomplete avi file xp has a problem deleting it. i read something about this on the microsoft website a while back, when i had a similar situation.

[russ_watters]

Are these files in Kazaa? Did you check to make sure the files aren't being downloaded by another user?

[GameGuru]

If your hard drive is just FAT32 use a Win98 boot disk to boot from and you should be able to delete the file in DOS np.

[Lord Vetinari]

I've had a similar problem occur when the file is still registered with whatever you used to play it. ie try clearing it from the playlist.

[Nemesys]

I've had that problem and found out that the file name displayed in Windows is not the actual file name but an alias so it could not be deleted as such.

Try to rename and delete the file using command prompt?
It's also possible that the real file name could be masked, to check this:
From a command prompt, do a "dir /x" and see if it reports a different name (one with a ~) to try.

[richardginn]

If you can get into dos mode, you will be able to squash those files.

[Miz]

If you're running WinXP, turn off its indexing service (Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Services, double click on Indexing, click the Stop button). That will stop XP from trying to "index" the file (and any others in the folder with it)you're trying to delete. You should be able to delete it then.

[Terry]

What does indexing do?

what will happen if I don't index files?

[vairox]

had the same problem and fixed it and i remember i did something with the registry but i forgot now...i did a search and came up with this and it sounds like what i did

The fix for Windows XP not letting you delete .avi I've seen this coming up more and more all over the place so I figured I'd stick it here. Avi files (divx) can be trouble in xp. there is a fix to let xp behave much better so it's possible to move or delete large avi files. The obnoxious bug in XP that causes Explorer to read the entire contents of broken AVI files before allowing any access to them is caused by bad behavior of shmedia.dll. To correct this misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following registry key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesCLSID{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}InProcServer32 This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files. Just an extra note, if you do a "search" for this key it will not be found, look for it manually it is very easy to find. As always newbie or not, if you FUBAR your registry its your own fault. This fix does work, I use it and have applied it to many XP machines."

What does indexing do?

i think it is used for the search function of windows...where it asks u if u want to index files for a faster search, i think its a sort of cache/table of contents for faster access to files...just a guess

[Miz]

Indexing is similar to Win9x's "Find Fast"...or "Fast Find," never can remember.

Find Fast/Fast Find was supposed to look at all the files on your computer when the system was idle to note their locations so they can be found faster. It turned out to be worse than useless because it would kick in when the system wasn't idle, usually slowing things to a crawl while it catalogued everything so it would run faster.

Indexing does more or less the same thing (resulting in "tunneling")and can take forever to inspect large files. It doesn't confine itself to sorting out just the file you're trying to access, either. It likes to go on and inspect every file in the folder with in. In the case of avi files, which can be huge, this sorting out can take days, maybe even weeks. (Perhaps an over-simplified explanation of Indexing but it gets the basics across)

I always turn indexing off and have never had a problem with it being disabled.