There is an AVI file on my hard drive that is difficult to get rid of. Once i tried to play it, windows explorer crashed (and continues to crash more than usual ever since) i tried to delete the file but revieved "unable to delete, file is being used by another program or person" so i killed every process in the task manager except explorer and task manager...tried to delete it...still nothing. I tried changing its attributes through properties...it won't allow me to access properties...i tried entering windows under safemode command prompt...when i enter the command to delete it, i get "cannot find file" even though i quadruple checked the command and syntax/spelling. Short of wiping the drive and starting over...i have no idea what to do.

Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open. Close all open programs. Go to 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 where the file is located. At the command prompt type DEL where is the file you wish to delete. Go back to Task Manager and click File > New Task and enter EXPLORER.exe to restart the GUI shell. Close Task Manager.

Corrected: Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open. Close all open programs. Go to 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 where the files are located. At the command prompt type DEL [filename] where [filename] is the file you wish to delete. Go back to Task Manager and click File > New Task and enter EXPLORER.exe to restart the GUI shell. Close Task Manager.

Noo, whenever you have that type of problem, the first thing to try is reboot into Safe Mode, and then delete the file. Most of these troublesome files can be deleted this way. If not, then go to the next level, but always try this first.

You should be able to delete the file via dos by booting a Win98 startup disk. Navigate to the correct folder/file first and make sure u get the right syntax, then from the A:> prompt delete it. Hope this helps

Two ways to fix this: open the registry editor (Start-Run: Type "regedit") browse to: [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler] delete the value in propertyhandler... works with me alternative (didnt test it): http://www.xchange101.org/tips55.htm

This may be the cause...If you have Real Player on your machine, it creates the file in the folder you specified in preferences....I noticed that when playing a file it created a copy in the folder specified for download...Anyway the real problem was easily tackled...You have to delete the folder the file is in....This means that you copy/paste all files from that folder into another, except the avi file,then delete the folder...It will delete the avi file as well.....Hope this works for you