I can't delete an MPEG-4 file - is it possible to delete an MPEG-4 file?

[Soul Reputation]

I don't know how to get an MPEG-4 file off my hard drive. How do you delete them off your machine? I think the stubbornness might be related to Nero as the files will play only with Nero and not with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. I went into Nero's control panel and I didn't see an ON/OFF button.


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2688/4309371959_0e836b5764_o.jpg

 

[Binky]

Try deleting it in safe mode.

 

[Phynaz]

Grab a program called move on boot.

 

[AFurryReptile]

Grab a program called move on boot.

This. Although sometimes you can just move the file into an empty folder, and delete that. You could also boot up a LiveCD and delete it that way.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

You could also use a little tool called Unlocker. Right-click any file that won't allow you to manipulate (move/delete/edit) it, it shows you what process is currently using that file and will allow you to 'free' the file. If you enable the Unlocker Assistant notification area function, you won't even have to right-click the file to launch Unlocker.

I used it a lot on Windows XP. Haven't really had that problem since I moved to 7 so not sure if 7 does things differently or if I will need to install it once again in the future should I have those problems.

 

[teejaded]

The file is probably in use by a crashed thumbnail generator shell extension. You can check this pretty easily by downloading process explorer and searching for a file handle open to that particular file.

If it's not explorer.exe just kill the program with the open handle and delete the file. If it is explorer.exe you have two choices. You can try and remove the offending shell extension which would prevent the problem from happening again or you can kill explorer and use a cmd window to delete the file and then restart explorer.

Let me know if you want to know how to find and remove the shell extention, I can think of a few ways but it would take a bit of typing to describe it.

Here's process explorer
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

[Soul Reputation]

You could also use a little tool called Unlocker.

Unlocker did the trick where Windows failed. I continue to use it. UL will work for anyone that ran into the same wall that I did. Thanks for posting.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I hate windows for that. It sometimes randomly holds on to a file and wont let you do anything. Unlocker usually works. Worse case scenario a linux live CD will always work. What I like about Linux live CDs is you will have FULL access to the file system, even stuff you can't access as admin in Windows, if permissions are set wrong or w/e.

 

[Nintendesert]

I had the same issue a few years ago, simply killing explorer.exe and deleting the file from the command line worked for me.