Tried downloading a couple of music samples from amazon.com. Windows media player wouldn't play them. When I closed my browser I found these two "hurl" icons on my desktop. Hurl and hurl-1. Tried to delete and get this message- "Cannot delete hurl. Access is denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write protected and that the file is not currently in use." Did a search for hurl and found no other files but these two. I'm assuming they are associated with the music samples I tried to download and play. No media players running in background, so how do I get rid of them?

Try safe mode.

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Didn't work. Get same message.

Boot in DOS and delete it.

del C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\Desktop\hurl*

or change to the desktop directory and:

del hurl*.*

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

They can certainly be deleted from DOS but I don't recognise del C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\Desktop for W98SE.

The first thing I would do is this:

Go to Settings/Folder Options/View.

Put a blob in "show all files".
Untick "Hide file extensions for known file types".
Ignore any warning messages and OK your way out (unless you want to be deprived of info forever).

Recheck the names of the two desktop icons
(they may now have the extension visible).

Shut down and restart in MS-DOS.

Type this:
del c:\windows\desktop\file.xyz

For file.xyz substitute the name in full now showing for each icon (one command line/file at a time).

DerekW

My suggestion would be to boot to dos standalone and type:
scanreg /restore

Restore to a date before this started. That will remove any Registry entries that access these files. You should then be able to delete them normally.

None of these suggestions work. When I tried these got file not find or path incorrect. Also did viewed the windows directory files- c:\windows\dir/p and c:\windows\desktop\dir/p and these files were not listed. Yet when I right click the icon and view properties they both say they are a desktop item and file is hurl.exe and hurl-1.exe. The scanreg/restore was a bust also. When I tried the del c:\windows\desktop\file.hurl.exe- got too many parameters message.

Disregard the previous post. I was in error when I said the files weren't there. I was looking in the wrong place and the command line I posted was incorrect. I got to the desktop directory and they were there and deleted using the del C:\windows\desktop\hurl.exe. Thnx all who posted. Usually takes some stumbling around on my part to get the help I recieve straight and make it work. Thnx again

Glad to hear you fixed it. Bearing in mind what ham30 said it would be a good idea to check for registry entries.

Type regedit in the Run box and hit Return. Do Edit/Find (top of page) and search for the full file names one at a time, hurl.exe & hurl-1.exe

If neither are found then fine. If you find one it is safe to look at the final entry in the tree that contains the file name, right click it and delete it. The entry will be in the right pane. It might be possible to go further back up the registry chain but unless you are happy in there I would then leave well alone or you might delete something you shouldn't.

This is preferable to registry restore in as much as you won't mess up any other valid things that you might have changed after the registry restore date.

I think it unlikely that these will return but if they do then follow post #5 from ham30 which I thought was an interesting approach.

DerekW