cannot delete NTUSER.dat 2

[justchillin32]

Am trying to delete user profiles of employees who are no longer with our company from C:\Documents and Settings on Windows Server 2003. Am getting message "Cannot delete NTUSER.dat. It is being used by another program." Have already gone to User Profiles under System Properties and the Delete button is greyed out. Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[58sniper]

Are there AV or backup programs running? What's it say in the Open Files?

Pat Richard MVP

 

[justchillin32]

No AV or back up programs running. None of these users are in the Open Files listing.

 

[Dublin73]

not trying to be funny, but have you rebooted this server?

 

[mmendes]

I for one have seen this happen often, especially with terminal server users profiles. I would love to know a solution that does not involve a reboot. And, yes I am aware of the Terminal server manager utility.

 

[Dublin73]

a scheduled after hours reboot can often be the simplest solution... but if you really want to delete the profile in real time, you can try the following...

look for any processes running under the user's login name on the server and stop them

if this fails to let you delete the profile...

go into the registry under HKEY_USERS and locate the user's registry hive, which will be represented by their Windows SID. Highlight the hive and from the file menu, unload the hive (this hive IS the NTUSER.DAT file so to speak). Then try your delete. reference this article...

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX965579

lastly, if none of the above works, download and run the MS delprof utility...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...95-6063-4462-8150-360394e98e1e&displaylang=en

and if this doesn't work... try google.com

 

[justchillin32]

Dublin73,

I understand you are not trying to be funny. Yes, the server has been re-booted numerous times afterhours. Unfortunately that did not change anything. The user profiles that are being a problem have not only been disabled, but they have been deleted from Active Directory as well. The profiles that were deleted successfully were disabled, but not deleted from AD.

OK, I will try your other suggestions about going to the registry and unloading the hive.

nmendes,

Yes, these are terminal server profiles like you mentioned.

 

[justchillin32]

Resolved. Believe it or not once the User Profile Hive Cleaner was run, all of the profiles deleted with no problems.

http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/...6D-8912-4E18-B570-42470E2F3582&displaylang=en

I appreciate everyone's responses and input.