File won't delete.

[Matthew L]

There is a log file on my machine which is 1k long,
massively fragmented and will not de-fragment. Because it
appears to be spread all over the hard drive it also
forces the fragmentation of other files. The file
is "Software.log" in Windows\system32\config.

Because it is only a log file I have assumed it is ok to
delete it. I have tried deleting it in both normal and
safe mode but in both instances I get the message:
"cannot delete software: There has been a sharing
violation. The source or destination file may be in use."

I have tried an application called pagedefrag which will
defragment system files on bootup, but it ignored this
file.

Any help gratefully recieved.

 

[Tom Swift]

A file that is 1 kb in size cannot be fragmented, because it fits into a
single cluster.

Tom Swift

 

[Matthew L]

Found the answer to this one on the MS knowledgebase
somewhere. The file is part of the registry file system
and dynamically resizes all the time. It is allocated
several hard disk clusters despite only being 1k long.

Apparently it is created during bootup by the registry.
When first created it can be quite large and can take up
many clusters. These clusters will always be available to
it regardless of how small it subsequently becomes "just
in case" they are needed subsequently. They are "locked"
which does not permit defragmenting or moving.

The problem is that the clusters should be released on a
reboot and the file re-set. In my case the clusters
remain locked permanently and no amount of re-booting will
release them. Defrag reports
"Fragments: 16, File Size: 1 KB, File Name: \WINNT\system32
\config\software.log"
What is really irritating is that it is fragmented all
over the free space, forcing other large files to fragment
around it.

My last hope is Diskeeper which has a "Boot-time"
application which defrags an NTFS partition before windows
is loaded. Am not sure even that will work. Another
MS "feature" that will cost me $45 to fix :-(

 

[Tom Swift]

Post back and let us know how much more speedy your system is as a result of
your efforts.

Tom Swift

 

[Matthew L]

I will assume your comment is supposed to be humorous,
despite the lack of smiley.

Obviously if I were to spend $45 for diskeeper I would
need to have other reasons.

The computer in question is my work computer which has
only one partition on a 6gb hard drive. It has 320 mb
memory which is not enough for the graphics heavy use I
put it to (despite my requests for an upgrade) and depends
on a large page file and will sometimes grind to a total
halt as it pages files in and out of memory. At the
moment my page file is forced into about 6 fragments by
this software.log file. I have no idea how much faster it
would be if the swap file were continuous, but it can't
help if it is fragmented.

 

[larryking]

www.deletelongfile.com fixes this problem