Can't delete file I made?

Hi,

I opened a self extracting .exe file with Winzip amended the contects and rezipped with a .exe extension in the name. I did not create it as a self extractor so did iot wrong and the file was called <name>.exe.zip
I removed the .zip file and double clicked it. It did not work, but I got a msdos window for a second.

Now I cannot delete the file which I need to as its over 300meg.
It says in use by another person or program?? I have closed lots of progs and it still wont delete?

Any ideas what I can do
TiA

 

Install MoveOnBoot. It will allow you to move, copy, or delete a file on the next boot, before it is in use:

http://www.gibinsoft.net/gipoutils/bin/moveonb.exe

 

Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Services. Scroll down to and double click on Indexing. Click on the Stop button. Leave that window open.

Try to delete the problem file. If that works (which is does most of the time), go back to the Indexing window and choose "Disabled" from the "Startup type" list.

I disable Indexing on all the XP systems I maintain and have never had a problem as a result.

 

? Reboot and then try to delete it.

Don't know what the *.exe was/is but you indicated, when you clicked it, a DOS-In-Abox opened and closed. Something may be loaded in memory that a reboot will rectify.

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Abraxas's link to what I assume is the older freeware version of a handy tool for doing this, may be the more handy way of doing this. I'm sure your going to run into this problem again and while there are many ways of over coming the problem this is the easiest.

 

Thanks for the tips. The Indexing Service is set to manual and is not running - so I cannot stop it. I have tried starting (still can't delete) and stopping (still can't delete).

 

Try Abraxas's recommended tool. If this doesn't work I got another way I can offer.

AFTER clarafying just exactly what this mysterious exe file is. Just want to make sure it isn't system critical.

 

Many thanks Abraxas - that lovely program worked a treat. I have had a similar problem in the past - that ended up being a trojan or dialer or something similar - I wonder if your program would have worked on that too...

Oh well thanks again.

 

It does come in handy. Thank you for the followup.

 

Ditto:

 

In the future you can find out what process is holding the file open. Lots of times, it is Explorer.

http://www.ultratech-llc.com/KB/?File=OpenFiles.TXT

 

As EXPORER has to be running - you can't do a loit if that is using a program can you?

 

AH....but in xp, using taskman [control\alt\de], you can "end task" or shutdown the explorer shell and when done you can start or load explorer.exe once again, no worse for the ware.

See my thread in:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23349&highlight=explorer+shell

Actually you can do quite a bit. It must be done through the taskman applet but it's do-able. This, coincidentlly, was going to be one of "My Alternative Ways" that I would have suggested for your deletion problem.

 

Another idea for this type of thing. Quite possibly you could boot to safe mode and log on as administrator instead of logging on with your username. I suspect if you did this you'd be able to delete the file from your username desktop. Don't know if it would work for sure but I've done this several times to delete files that can't ordinarily be deleted; windows numerous index.dat files for example.

 

I've found that, when I can't delete a file because it's "in use ", simply logging off and back on usually clears the restriction.