Problem deleting .avi file from hard drive

[Kevin Miller]

Dear Support,

I captured a 12 GB .avi file from my digital camera and
saved it on my c: drive. Last night I deleted it using
windows explorer. To do this, I right clicked on the file
and clicked delete. A dialogue box came up and
said, "this file is to large for the recycle bin, do you
want to permanently delete it?" I said yes. The file
slowly deleted. I then checked my disk space and did not
recovered any of the 12 GB back. My disk is still just as
full. It is as if I never deleted the file, but the file
name is gone. Why is this so? How do I fix this problem?

Thanks much for your help.

Kevin Miller

 

[gezerglide]

I'm not MS support but if it were me, the first thing I would try is right
clicking on the drive in "my computer" . Select properties then pick the
Tools tab and run "check now". OR If you've got Norton utilities running,
you may be a victim of the dreaded "Norton protected recycle bin" Just tell
your recycle bin to delete the Norton protected files also.

 

[Jason Tsang]

Some program is holding it open.

It could be the app you were working on.
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.