Cannot Delete File. Being used by another Person or Program

[RP]

Hi,
I tried to copy a huge file (13 GB-digital video) from one
folder to another. But Windows Explorer stopped responding
and I had to End Task. This resulted in a partially copied
file in the destination directory eating up about 12 GB of
space! Now wehn I try to delete this partially copied file
from the destination folder I get this meesage "Cannot
delete file. This file is being used by another person or
program.". I have tried rebooting, restoring to a previous
date, running CheckDisc. Nothing works-I still get the
same message. I am using Windows XP home edition.

Please Help!!!

 

[Sousa T.]

I try to delete this partially copied file
from the destination folder I get this meesage "Cannot
delete file. This file is being used by another person or
program.".

Try this:

open Taskmanager and quit all unneede Tasks... leave only System Tasks and
try it again...

If this doesn't work, go get a DOS Bootdisk and kill the file from DOS ;D

have a nice day..

 

[Jason Tsang]

Some program is holding it open.

It could an application that interacts with the file
It could also be explorer trying to create a thumbnail of the avi but
failing (but sometimes it will keep the file open).

You can use this trick to delete the file if it is the latter
http://www.theeldergeek.com/delete_undeletable_file.htm

If you want to prevent Windows XP from creating a thumbnail of the AVI, see
here
Start/Run/Regedit -
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler.
Delete the "Default" key.

 

[Tim Slattery]

If this doesn't work, go get a DOS Bootdisk and kill the file from DOS ;D

That ain't gonna work. He can have a 12GB file only on an NTFS file
system, and DOS can't see an NTFS partition.

 

[Sousa T.]

Tim Slattery schrieb

That ain't gonna work. He can have a 12GB file only on an NTFS file
system, and DOS can't see an NTFS partition.

http://is-it-true.org/nt/atips/atips174.shtml


Otherwise start Win in Savemode and try to delete...

cya