I had a file on my desktop that did not want to delete, and the "cut
and refresh" method did not work for me in Windows Vista.
The correct way to do it is to delete the file from the Command Prompt
with administrator privileges.
To do this, find Command Prompt in your Start menu by typing 'Command'
in the search box, then right-click it and select Run as
Administrator.
Then type 'cd %userprofile%\desktop' and press enter, that should take
you to your desktop folder. (If the file is located in another folder
you will have to navigate there yourself, this is not a treatise on
using the Command Prompt)
Type 'dir' to view the contents of the directory, which for this
example would be your Desktop folder.
Then type 'del filename.xyz' where xyz is the file's extension.
e.g. the offending file is called wontdelete.zip
You would type 'del wontdelete.zip' and press enter.
If there are spaces anywhere in the filename you will have to put it
in quotation marks.
e.g. del "w o n t d e l e t e.zip"
Sometimes the filename or folder is so complicated it might still say
'file could not be found'
Try searching for an shorter name using the dir command and * as a
wildcard
e.g. The filename or folder contains the word 'zip' in it, you would
enter 'dir *zip*'
As long as you get only the desired file or folder, you can now safely
enter 'del *zip*'
If you enter it when there are i.e. 4 entries then it would delete all
4.
It shouldn't take long to experiment with the dir command and
wildcards to narrow your search down.
Hope this helps.