Errr...They Just Wont Go Away

Ok...I have like a couple hundred movie files and out of all of them i can only move and delete about 1/3 of them. Every time i try to move them it says they are being used. I KNOW they are not. Someone was saying how i should change my window shell but i REALLY dont want to mess with that. I have tried using wsftp - pro which didnt work.

If anyone has any ideas that would be GREAT!!

Now i'm a completely newbie to PC's so could be completely wrong, but do you have them associated with any programmes you might have running in the background and this might be causing you to get this message? Could try checking, disabling them then try deleting them(try ctrl,alt,dlt, see whats running). Just an idea i thought might be worth mentioning since your desperate

Lol, yes i have tried that and nothing is running that shouldnt be

Hmm.. I had the same problem.. Could delete some files, than after a reboot some more became avilable for deletion and so forth..

Did see a solution once, think it was related to preview? Try running explorer i details mode and see if that helps..

Boot into Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Then switch to the directory containing the files and try deleting them.

You should have complete control in safemode, I have been able to delete stubborn files that wouldn't delete in windows in safemode.

You won't need to be changing your shell or anything like that. That's crap.

WinNT-based OSes don't seem to like to delete certain files on occaision, stating that they're in use. It's happened to me a few times.

Booting into safe mode would be your best option, as all that loads in safe mode is the basics: drivers and a few things to get you going.

Just open up the task manager and select the processes tab, locate explorer.exe in the list and end it. Find the files you want to move and try move them, once you have, select file>new task and type "explorer" that will restart the GUI.

That would be my first line of attack as you dont need to reboot.

-Chris

woo, i think i can actually answer this one. disable XPs preview function:

Configure which files WinXP should preview Post Comment
WinXP is very aggresive about being user friendly, and provides a nice preview feature for showing details and snapshots of pictures and movies. But if the media-file is flawed, then the preview feature starts to scan the entire file (F.ex. with AVI and MPG/MPEG files where the header or the index at the end of the file is broken). This can lead to high CPU usage and the file being locked, so when trying move or delete the file it gives the error:
Cannot delete/move <filename>: It is being used by another proson or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again
Disable preview for AVI files by deleting the (Default) in registry (Make a backup first):
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \SystemFileAssociations \.avi \shellex \PropertyHandler]
(Default) = (Value not set)
Note to disable preview for other file-types just exchange the .avi with the wanted filetype and delete the (Default) for the wanted file-type.

Note if one likes the preview feature but just cannot delete a file then one can try:
Momentarily unregister shmedia.dll (Media File Property Extractor Shell Extension ) to delete the file:
regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll
(delete the file)
regsvr32 shmedia.dll

Rename the file so it no longer has the extension of a media file
Create a new folder and move the file into the new folder and delete the new folder
Close all explorer.exe and use the command-prompt.
Boot in safemode and delete the file, as the preview feature is disabled.

Note if have a directory containing many media files (Like mp3), then the preview feature will cause a slowdown when opening the folder, because it wants to extract information for each file.

Related Change Webview for all folders to stop movie preview

More Info MS KB 822430

Credits TweakXp.com

as posted by germanjulian here