need help to delete large file

[clayman]

Hope im posting this to the correct forum...


Im using XP Home Edition.
I captured a 4 gig video file and now i cant delete it off my hard drive. Everytime i try, I get told its being used by another user or program.

No applications are running though, and i dont have any other user profiles set up. I tried rebooting but i still cannot delete the file... I keep getting the same message.

There must be a way to get rid of this file so if anyone can tell me i'd appreciate it greatly.

Thanks 🙂

 

[reicherb]

Try deleting it in safe mode.

 

[wxjunkie]

Or just boot to Win98 with a floppy and delete it with DOS. You also should turn off your recycle bin when deleting large files like that.

 

[Trevah]

Even though I don't have the answer (yet), I can dispell a few things......first you most likely won't be able to delete the file using a win98 startup disk (because win98 uses fat32 and since he is most likely using ntfs win98 won't recognize the drive), booting in safe mode won't work either.....I'm working on the same problem but will respond as soon as I have the answer....

 

[Trevah]

Ok....There are a few ways.....

1....I've seen this coming up more and more all over the place so I figured I'd stick it here.
Avi files (divx) can be trouble in xp. there is a fix to let xp behave much better so it's possible to move or delete large avi files. The obnoxious bug in XP that causes Explorer to read the entire contents of broken AVI files before allowing any access to them is caused by bad behavior of shmedia.dll.
To correct this misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following
registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}\InProcServer32
This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files.
Just an extra note, if you do a "search" for this key it will not be found, look for it manually it is very easy to find. As always newbie or not, if you FUBAR your registry its your own fault. This fix does work, I use it and have applied it to many XP machines
Courtesy of RiG
note....this method will make viewing avi properties impossible in file explorer - which is very useful

2...if you want to delete AVIs without the registry hack, try this: bring up the task manager, end the Explorer process, then restart it (using New Task) to bring up your desktop again. immediately open up a DOS prompt and delete the AVI file......Courtesy of lee mu bai

3...If you have a P2P file sharing program (Grokster is what i use).
Open the program and PLace the file in the "My ______" (for instance the
media directory forgrokster is called, My Grokster, so you would put the
file in "MyGrokster") and just delete it from there. That's how I usually do
it. Courtesy of Bounty Hunter

4...all you really have to do for a quick delete is right click the avi, select properties, wait a couple seconds till it pops up the info, then close the info box and delete the file. or you can double click, when the file starts to play, close the playback and then it is free to delete. but you must delete asap - if you move around explorer, it will have to re-read the info.
so if you want to keep the quick info/properties availability for avi files, don't delete the registry......Courtesy of FiEND

Well....That should solve your problem....the first method of #4 works the best for me as I don't want to lose viewing the avi properties....

 

[BigJ]

Booting in safe mode could work, try going into task manager and under Applications/Processes ending all the programs that aren't necessary.

 

[MSantiago]

The best way to delete stubborn files (even protected system ones, but do this at your own risk :Q) is by booting off your XP CD and selecting recovery mode. It basically drops you to a command prompt and lets you copy, rename, delete, and move files. Comes in really handy if you need to restore a damaged system file and your system isn't able to boot, but you can use it for other things too.

 

[NogginBoink]

Originally posted by: MSantiago
The best way to delete stubborn files (even protected system ones, but do this at your own risk :Q) is by booting off your XP CD and selecting recovery mode. It basically drops you to a command prompt and lets you copy, rename, delete, and move files. Comes in really handy if you need to restore a damaged system file and your system isn't able to boot, but you can use it for other things too.

By default, RC will only let you get to files at the root of the drives and into the %windir% folder and it's subfolders.

I'd use inuse.exe per Q228930 if you don't want to try the above reghack.

 

[LiLithTecH]

How about looking in the your User\Temp directory and deleting the
tmp file that is no doubt in there.

 

[MSantiago]

Originally posted by: NogginBoink

Originally posted by: MSantiago
The best way to delete stubborn files (even protected system ones, but do this at your own risk :Q) is by booting off your XP CD and selecting recovery mode. It basically drops you to a command prompt and lets you copy, rename, delete, and move files. Comes in really handy if you need to restore a damaged system file and your system isn't able to boot, but you can use it for other things too.

By default, RC will only let you get to files at the root of the drives and into the %windir% folder and it's subfolders.

I'd use inuse.exe per Q228930 if you don't want to try the above reghack.

Actually, the RC will allow you to access any any directory on any drive of any partition as if you were an administrator. The default directory that it places you in is %WinDir%, but you can get to the root by typing in "cd .." or "cd \". Note the space between the cd and the backslash; "cd\" isn't recognized by the RC.