Quake3World

Some videos won't delete

I'm trying to delete some videos I downloaded to free up hard disk space, but it says it can't delete them cause they are being used by another person or program. This is after restarting Windows without any programs runnning apart from AVG (my virus protector) and ZoneAlarm (my firewall).

I did Ctrl-Alt-Del to open up the Windows Task Manager and didn't find anything unusual in the Processes list (or the Apllications list).

What's causing this? How can I fix it?

try opening a CMD prompt, leave that open and CTR+Alt+del and close down Explorer..

then from the command prompt navigate to the video you want to delete and Type Del filename and it should do it for ya.

Else, try going into Safemode

ohhh, and sorry, dont close the Task manager window, Click on the app's tab when you are done the CMD steps and click on "New task" and type in Explorer.

then it will be back to normal

This usually happens because when you select a video file, windows tries to build a preview shot of the file for either the thumbnail icon or the folder sidebar thingy.

You may be able to cure this by changing the folder view to 'list' and by going into folder options and selecting 'use windows classic folders' to turn off the sidebar. Then reboot and try again.

Good luck. Let me know if this works/fails.

I suspect amidy's solution will also work for the same reason - if you're deleting the file without 'touching' it in explorer, it shouldn't attempt to build a preview from the file and lock it.

Foo wrote:This usually happens because when you select a video file, windows tries to build a preview shot of the file for either the thumbnail icon or the folder sidebar thingy.

You may be able to cure this by changing the folder view to 'list' and by going into folder options and selecting 'use windows classic folders' to turn off the sidebar. Then reboot and try again.

Good luck. Let me know if this works/fails.

I suspect amidy's solution will also work for the same reason - if you're deleting the file without 'touching' it in explorer, it shouldn't attempt to build a preview from the file and lock it.

It was already as Details (simmilar to List) and I was using Explorer with folders on the left, not a sidebar.

I just tried it again, though and it worked. With the first file it worked straight away. With the second file it didn't, then after waiting for a bit after selecting it it did. I think I had to wait for Windows to build the preview or get the file properties before the file would delete.

Thanks for the help.

Edit: Yeah, I found that the status bar (at the bottom of the window) must have the file information displayed in it before the file can be deleted. This is either with or without "Use Windows classic folders" selected (I've deleted 2 videos seperately so I know).