Problem deleting/renaming/moving files

[Guest]

I was trying to rename a 71MB avi file and it wouldn't let me. An error
message came up saying it is being used by another person or program and to
close the programs that are using it and try again. I use Windows Media
Player to play avi files and it was closed when I tried to delete it. I
copied the file to try to rename it but that made it worse. I get the same
error message with both files and now I can't delete either of them. How do I
fix this?

 

[David Candy]

By waiting. Go make a cup of coffee. Explorer is reading the whole file (for no good reason) to give previews and metadata. Until recently most AVIs were small so it didn't matter.

 

[Guest]

But it feels like it's permanent. I tried to delete it after restarting my
computer and shutting it down and turning it back on and no change. Is there
anyway to bypass it?

 

[David Candy]

If you can use a command prompt type

taskkill /f explorer.exe
del "c:\whatever\whatever.avi"
explorer

 

[David Candy]

or select file, wait, press delete.

 

[Andy]

try going into safe mode and delete/rename it that way. Otherwise look
at your processes and see what is running.