Deleting stubborn files and folders

Posted by Vic Laurie
July 24, 2006

Sometimes when you try to delete a file or folder, Windows won’t let you. You may get a message like

Unable to delete

This situation can arise for a variety of reasons. The worst case is when a virus infection is causing the problem. Here is a page that deals with that situation. Other causes are programs running in the background (often security programs) that have locked the file that you are trying to delete. ZoneAlarm log files are an example. They can pile up but ZA keeps them locked so you can’t delete them the normal way. Norton Anti-Virus Protected Files are also locked, sometimes even if you uninstall Norton. Windows XP locks AVI files if you are using the Preview Pane. And then there are files that are being used by the system and that should not be deleted.

If you know that a stubborn file is unneccessary and want to get rid of it, there are some free software programs that can do this. They work by removing the file after a reboot and before the system gets a chance to lock the file. One program is MoveOnBoot and another is
Unlocker

If you have FAT32 instead of NTFS for your file system, you can do the deletion yourself by booting to DOS and deleting from there.

Computer management, File management

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