I copied a 700 meg file from my C: drive to my D: drive. Now, I want to delete the file from D:. I get the message "Cannot delete . It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again". I shut off my PC and restarted, and still no luck deleting. THere are NO programs running. How do I get rid of this file? Thanks!

You Cannot Delete a File or a Folder http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320081 -------------------- Also try deleting it in Windows Safe-Mode. No programs or drivers running. Hold down F8 during boot.

Is the file has .AVI extension? Yeah, Win XP try to read the entire .AVI file for the information so it lock it. It keep saying somebody else is using the file. It is a bug in Win XP. If your file has .AVI extension email me. I will dig up the solution from my book for you Email : oscarkb@cox.net

Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open. Close all open programs. Click Start, Run and enter TASKMGR.exe Go to the Processes tab and End Process on Explorer.exe. Leave Task Manager open. Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory the AVI (or other undeletable file) is located in. At the command prompt type DEL where is the file you wish to delete. Go back to Task Manager, click File, New Task and enter EXPLORER.exe to restart the GUI shell. Close Task Manager.

But that only solve the problem temporary. Here is an intercept from vcdhelp.com To correct this misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following registry key. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesCLSID{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}InProcServer32 This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files.

Thank you! It was an AVI file. Out of curiosity, I tried renaming another file with an AVI extension, then viewing the properties and sure enough it also became locked. Interestingly, using the "CACL" command from a DOS prompt, I was able to remove all user privileges except my own and then delete the file!