Cannot delete file 1

[xlhelp]

Hi, I have Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. All of a sudden I am having problems deleting files from Windows Explorer or Recycling Bin. Doesn't happen with all files, only some and they are still there. I get a dialog box with "Discovered 0 Items (0 Bytes)" and it keeps on running through the colour band and nothing else happens. I just kill the box. Try delete the next file, it works fine. Right now it's two files that are giving me headaches.

Anyone know the cause, effect and remedy?

Thanks.

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[kjv1611]

It sounds like some process has the files locked. It could be a virus/security scanner. It could be a defrag/optimizer program. It could be an image file manipulator/mounting app. It could be anything, really.

1. Try deleting while in safe mode - better chance that whatever has it locked won't do so any longer.

2. I've seen at least once or twice where stopping the Recycle bin from monitoring a particular drive helped in the specific situation... right-click Recycle Bin, Properties, and look around there.

3. Make sure you don't have any hard drive/disk or memory/RAM errors... You can check Computer Management (right click my computer, select Manage, then look to Event Viewer, System Messages). If you see a decent frequency of disk-related or volume-related error/warning messages, something may be amiss. Another thing to try is UBCD or UBCD4Win to scan the memory, hard drive(s) for problems/errors.

4. If everything else checks out, it might not hurt running a general clean-up utility, such as CCleaner, Advanced System Care, or Glary Utilities (all avaialble from

http://www.download.com).

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[linney]

With files in the Recycle Bin, sometimes just pressing the F5 Key to Refresh the view works.

Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right-click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking. Try it first by not checking either box (this will run it in a Read-only mode) to see if it flags any hard drive or file problems. If it does, restart it by ticking both boxes, and rerun it to allow it to attempt to fix any found problems.

 

[xlhelp]

Thanks kjv1611 and linney.

kjv, Safeboot did the trick. Thanks.

Canadian eh! Check out the new social forum Tek-Tips in Canada.
With the state of the world today, monkeys should get grossly insulted when humans claim to be their decendents