Topic awaiting preservation: Win XP cannot move/delete/copy

Been trying to do a little cleanup and reorganization today and I'm contantly getting errors like

quote:

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Cannot move(copy/delete) FILENAME: It is being used by another person or program.

Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.

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or, the renaming version:

quote:

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Cannot rename FILENAME: Access is denied.

Make sure that the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

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Of course there's no other app using these files, I've checked the properties, made sure they're not read only, even shut of the indexing services' access to them. The only success I've had is deleting some of the offending files in safe mode from the cmd prompt. With 5GB of stuff I'm shuffling around, most all files under 1MB, no way I wanna do all this from the cmd line, this is why I run a GUI OS

This is driving me absolutely nuts and I haven't had any luck getting into the MS KBase today. Newsgroups are full of this problem but no answers I'd call acceptable yet...

Anyone know what to do here?

Delete your operating system and re-install Win2000 or earlier.

Really though, lots of people I work with have WinXP and are having tons
of problems with it, luckily I got here before the new computers came in.

I haven't worked with XP so this may not work, but in the other versions of Windows if I can't delete a file after rebooting, I make a boot diskette and boot from it. I can then usually delete any files from the hard drive I want to.




-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

deinitely not what I wanna hear fellas

is it just me that can't get through to any MS sites? tracert microsoft.com is crapping out in MS' netblock in Redmond. Been this way for close to an hour I bet...

try booting in safe mode (and deleting the file). that usually works for me.

[This message has been edited by Raptor (edited 01-15-2004).]

I've heard that a lot, but is that really an acecptable option? When you're trying to reorganize 6,312 files? On the latest and greatest MS OS?

I'ma kill it

I have this problem all the time with XP, but only with PSD files. Your problem may be different, but I'll throw this out there just in case.

My solution, which works most of the time, is to ctrl-alt-del to bring up task manager. In there, shut down explorer.exe, then while still in task manager, hit file > run and restart explorer. Not really a solution, but the only workaround I've found.

I always thought that maybe when explorer accesses the PSD files to create thumbnails, it didn't entirely let them go. But why only PSD, beats me. Maybe because they are not natively supported by XP.

Win2k, yeah, I am definately reverting next time I feel the need to reinstall. XP pisses me off.

This is just an idea out of the blue .. could it be the virtual memory ? I.E read-only or very tiny or something weird .. probably not.

anywho yea, delete XP its sucks donkeys. I'd say my next upgrade will be away from MS, am on win2kpro at the mo' it supports pretty much everything and with so many users it isnt likely hardware vendors will cut us out of the market so I can't see any reason to upgrade (downgrade in this case).

I've been running this machine for just over a year with absolutely no problems, I've liked it better than win2k which I've had a ton of experience with. I hated XP when I first started running it (all the eye candy and hand holding junk) but I've got it tweaked to where it doen't bother me much and it's really been very stable.

Then today. Today was a bad day. I spent the last 4.5 hours scrambling, thinking at first I had a virus. The documented symptoms as I went (warning: RANT):

quote:

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can't reach (In IE or Firebird)
http://microsoft.com
http://pcbug.org
http://housecall.antivirus.com (trend micro's remote virus scanning)
http://mcafee.com (my AV software, I can get symantec.com [Norton's site] fine)
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 (shields up remote port scanning)

I also cannot connect to the MSNMessenger service in Trillian, while I connect to ICQ fine.

I was able to do a port scan and virus scan at alternate sites (broadbandreports.com and bitdefender.com respectively) and I am complete stealth on ports and showing no infected files from the virus scans.

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After I eliminated the possibilities of virii/trojan/worm I started looking at networking problems, firewall, networking/protocol settings, DNS lookups and such, no joy.

All this time I can chat on ICQ and surf around except for the sites noted.

Then one time I'm rebooting and go into system diagnostics utility and run a few tests on the NIC, both of them pass with no errors reported, then I boot regular, load Trillian and my MSN contacts are showing online. ThenI check the sites and run my DAT updater and boom, everything fine.

4.5 hours of messing with crap to have it mysteriously fix itself and I'll probably never know what happened. I could have killed someone.




edit: fixin quote and list, and gotcha Tao

[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 01-16-2004).]

Hang on a Mo' chaps this just should not be happening at all!
Jason I seem to remember something like that on my system (I have XPHome) but as far as I can remember it only effected a handfull of files or folders.
This is just "shootin' from the hip".
Do you have Norton (with Norton Protected Files turned on)?
What setting's do you have "system restore" switched on to?
I seem to remember resolving a problem like that by Turning off Norton Protected Files, and also ( as long as everything else is running OK on the computer) turning off system restore.
I then ran an antivirus and trojan removing software, rebooted turned system restore back on, and the problem vanished.
I hasten to add, J, that I am no expert, and the ^above^ procedure may have had nothin to do with it, but I felt I just had to suggest something.
Oh yeah, I also recall that if I uninstalled a Prog' using anything other than "Add Remove Programs" that sometimes caused an error. And the best way I found of sorting that out, was to reinstall the program. and then remove it using "Add Remove Programs"
Sorry I can't be more precise JK.


:::tao:::

no Norton on this machine, I run it home and prefer it actually.

If you searcg through newsgroups you'll see it's not an uncommon problem, and there are some mentions of issues with NAV and XP but it really seems like there's no real pat answer out there just yet.

Thanks

This problem of not being able to delete a file in WinXP (delete/rename, whatever) because it's in use, I have it sometimes. I can reboot to my other installation of WinXP and the file will remain undeletable. Then, I go to my Win2k installation and I can delete the file with no problem. That's what I do. It happens at random and with no specific application. It just happens. Truth is WinXP is great until when it's not great anymore, then it sucks. Win2k never let me down.

Ah you posted as I was posting JK
Good to hear you've resolved the problem.
I'm not one to anthropomorphize much, however, sometimes I think the computer just wants a bit of quality time with you You know, made a fuss of.
I know it's late....


:::tao:::

quote:

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Truth is WinXP is great until when it's not great anymore, then it sucks.

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give this a whirl...

amen to that...



[This message has been edited by Boudga (edited 01-16-2004).]

<BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Return to the open Task Manager window and click File

By chance an AVI file? I had a similar problem with a partially downloaded (and hence corrupt) AVI file. As you have experienced, many reboots later and the file was still "being used by another person or program."

The problem is due to a bug in Windows. A work-around is to rename or delete the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}

Curiously, Windows was being truthful in stating the error message. Another program (or DLL in this case) was using your file. The "AVI Properties Handler" (which this key references) had the file locked as it was busily thrashing about trying to make sense of the senseless.

You'll probably want to remove this key regardless of your predicament. Removal will speed-up your system. See http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1209 (I figure half the keys in there are dead weight, this but only one.)

Immediate results guaranteed or your money back.

EDIT:

I didn't think of it at the time, but a similar result *might* be achieved through the Command prompt, assuming DEL doesn't invoke the bratty DLL.

[This message has been edited by John (edited 01-18-2004).]

Tried using another file manager than explorer?

__________________________________


Sexy Demoness cel

grrrr, no not AVIs but it is happening a lot with Illustrator files, sometimes even folders. It's really getting on my nerves.

Alevice, gimme link to another filemanager you speaking of, I'll try anything at this point

The 'shut down explorer process and then restart it using task manager' method is what I do and it always works. I normally only have teh problem with files I have just looked at or checked the properties of or something (files recently accessed by explorer). It may be the norton protected file thing, but I shut that off as first thing I do and it still happens for me.

I have a very weird problem myself. basically I upgraded to xp pro from 2k and no problems (well no problems the second time I tried it anyway, after reinstalling 2k to rescue my files coz xp upgrade buggered my whole system on first attempt). Anyway, the problem is I then went to remove a program that had been installed previously and obviously it was no longer in the uninstall menu so I just deleted all reference to it from my computer and registry, except that this program automatically created subfolders in it's intallation directory - these folders related to projects that were managed by said same program. Now whenever I try to delete the folder it always pops up a system error red cross alert dialog thing saying:

Error Deleting File or Folder [dialog title bar]

Cannot delete [myfile] : cannot find specified file.

Make sure you specify the correct path and file name.

But it is there, I can see the damned thing!

The name of the folder that causes the problem is:

'   The Gift - Official Band Website   '

- notice that spaces are intentional and actually in the directory name which is odd since windows doesn't allow leading or trailing spaces by default. This is what I think may be the problem, but I can't rename the file coz windows says it cannot find it.

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