Undeletable file!! (being used by another person or process) FIX!!!

[teddyFBI]

So I downloaded a movie (non-porn, although that's irrelevant for these purposes) from Limewire the other day. Tried to play it, but Windows Media Player said it couldn't because the file was corrupt or otherwise non-playable format.

So I figured "oh well" and tried to delete it. Except I can't -- it tells me that the file is currently being used by another person or process. Fair enough. So I restart my computer. Still can't delete it!! I even start it up in safe mode (so only the most essential functions are running in the Processes menu. STILL, it tells me that the file is in use and can't be deleted.

I'm annoyed, but also concerned b/c you never know what you're downloading when you get random Limewire files. How do I get rid of this thing??

(I did full system antivirus and spyware scans, everything came up clean)

[C-Dog]

Boot to a floppy drive with NTFS support, and delete the file from a command prompt?

Or, you could add a command to delete the file at the beginning of your startup routine, and see if that works. You will probably need to boot to a prompt of some type though.

Try Knoppix, you can burn the CD and launch a fully functional linux OS from it, you should be able to delete the file in that.

C-Dog

[PLOlover]

search for moveonboot, you can right click on a file and have it deleted on the next reboot

[TimM]

One possible problem I encountered myself:

If you have the folder containing the file set to view thumbnails, Windows will try to take a frame from the movie to show as a thumbnail in the directory listing. Only since the file is corrupt, it will keep trying and not succeed. By changing the directory view to something other than thumbnail, I was able to delete an "undeletable" file.