Need to Delete a file thats undeletable

Shane St.

Help theres a file on my computer that won't delete. Everytime i go to delete it it says its being used by another program and it also jacks my cpu usage up to 100. I read up that online if you disable windows explorer u can delete it through command prompt. However I'm useless at these sorts of things so could and of the good people of boards tell me exactly what I have to type to delete this file.

Also mods, not sure where to put this so feel free to move it

Shane St.

anyone?

Triangle

First off - Make sure the file is not needed by your computer

Have you tried booting into Safe mode and then trying to delete the file? This disables alot of drivers (one of which may be using that file). Press F8 before the windows logo appears brings up the menu.

Gaz

Do a google search for a delete on boot application, there are many free ones.

RangeR

FIRSTLY : Name the file.

Don't just delete it until we [or someone here] can let you know if it's safe or not. It's probably part of a wider suite of applications. This suit may stop working if you simply delete the file.

Identify it then we can give advise. I'm thinking more an uninstall/modification rather than simple delete.

Shane St.

the file is a video file .avi. Its weird when i go to delete it the cpu usage goes to 100% and the comp is virtuallty unusable. However if i disable windows explorer the cpu usage goes back to normal. any ideas?

Shane St.

thank you so so much. It was windows explorer causing the damage. Spent ages yesterday trying to get rid of it. The good people of boards prevail again. :D:D:D

homer911

You dont specify your OS. If its Vista, have you heard of the long goodbey bug? AVI files tend to be quite large - it could have been the problem here.

When I was on Vista I had terrible problems trying to delete large files