Windows Refusing to Delete Folders

dudara

Since I installed iTunes to use with my iPod, my music folder is all up in a mess due to iTunes organisational skills. Well, I turned self-organising off in iTunes, and now I want to rearrange my folders the way I like them. However, when i I copy or cut a song from one folder to another and then try to delete the original, Windows will not allow me do it, as another application is using it.

any ideas?

aidan_walsh

Have you switched iTunes off before you started moving everything around? Its not still running in the taskbar or as a service?

SantaHoe

Try safe mode.

dudara

It's off, as far as I know, unless that iTunes Service thing that runs in the background influences it.

Naw, just turned all iTunes stuff off, and still no joy.


I've had this happen often before with Windows, as there is obviously some legacy somewhere in the system associated with the file/folder that you are trying to delete. How can i get rid of it?

aidan_walsh

It sounds like iTunes isn't properly letting go of the locks it places on the folders... Not much I can suggest except to restart the machine and try then before you start iTunes up.

SantaHoe

/me wonders how many ignore lists he's on.

Hold F8 while the pc boots, choose "safe mode".
Am I speaking too quickly or something? :rolleyes:

Sherifu

It could be a permissions thing if you can't find anything running in processes from i-tunes. However its most likely an i-tunes thing. You could ctrl-alt-delete and go through your processes one by one checking them off against
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary
if you have the patience
Good way to find out whats under the bonnet of your machine.

dudara

SantaHoe wrote:

/me wonders how many ignore lists he's on.

Hold F8 while the pc boots, choose "safe mode".
Am I speaking too quickly or something? :rolleyes:

If you were here in front of me, i'd tell you to **** right off and stop talking condescendingly. I appreciated your suggestion the first time round.

My concern is that this is more of a general problem that happens on my machine regularly and I would like to fix it correctly and for good, I don't have the time and the patience to put my machine into safe mode everytime I want to delete a file.

Anyhoo, if I reboot, without lauching iTunes, I can delete a few files, but the minute i copy and paste from one to another, I can't delete anymore, so I was thinking that this might be a problem with the clipboard program.

hulhi

1. Go to Start/Run/CMD and type in: RD /S [drive:] path
2. Close all open apps. Open a command prompt (Start/Run/CMD). Then open the Task Manager and click on the Processes tab, select "explorer.exe" under Image Name. Click "End Process". In the opened Command Prompt type in: RD /S [drive:] path, Once done, go back to the task manager and click on the Applications tab. Click the "New Task..." button. in the dialog, type explorer.exe and click OK.

it's probably some application or monitoring process that is using those folders, then you'll have to end that process from task manager or turn it off within application settings. (you can use something like Process Explorer: http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml.)

if it's just windows explorer thing (usually happens with video files etc. when details taskbar is displayed) then above process should work, or you could some other file explorer program even Winrar will do.

dudara

Cheers Hulhi, will try that, (oh, for the forcefulness of unix!)

MrPinK

I've had this problem once or twice before, but I've never used iTunes. Just XP refusing to let me delete a certain file even after rebooting. As far as I remember I was able to delete the whole folder the file was in and that sorted it out.