How to delete undeletable files in Windows (Part 1)

Are you sick of seeing messages like these when you try and delete a file:

- ‘Cannot delete file: Access Denied’.

- There has been a sharing violation.

- The source or destination file may be in use.

- The file is in use by another program or user.

- Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

You may be wanting to remove a piece of unwanted software, sort out all those directories that have no coordination, you may be practicing darker arts and want to get rid of incriminating files that could get you in a spot of bother. Whatever it is, when you cannot delete files from your computer it causes varying degrees of angst. As such it is great to know there are ways to delete those ‘undeletable’ files.

In this blog we will discuss the manual process.

Windows XP

First up lets concentrate on Windows XP, after all XP is the most common OperatingSystem on PC’s today. Of course as the years progress systems will come with Vista as standard… but that’s for another time.

Manually Deleting Undeletable Files

To manually delete ‘undeletable’ files in XP follow these steps;

Note: Steps 1 to 3 relate to performing a search to locate the file in question. If you know where the file is located go straight to step 4.

1. Click Start – Search – For Files or Folders - All files and folders.

2. Type in the name of the file you want deleting.

3. Click Search and the file should be displayed in the right hand pane in ‘SearchResults’.

4. Once the file is located, right-click it and choose properties. Make a note of the files location. i.e C:\Documents and Setting\My Documents\undeleteablefilesname.

5. Close the search box and all other program windows.

6. Click Start - Run and type ‘TASKMGR.EXE’ to start the Task Manager.

7. Click the Processes tab and click on the process ‘explorer.exe’. Click ‘End Process’.

8. Minimize the Task Manager window (i.e. do not close it).

9. Click Start - Run and type ‘cmd’ to open a Command Prompt window.

10. Navigate to the directory where the ‘undeletable’ file is, using the ‘cd’ command. i.e. cd c:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\undeletablefilename.

11. Use the ‘del’ command to delete the file. i.e. del ‘undeletablefilename’.

12. Launch the Task Manager session again, click File - New Task and enterEXPLORER.EXE to restart the Windows shell.

13. Close Task Manager.

After the explorer.exe holding the files permissions was stopped as a running process, the file could then be deleted via the DOS command prompt.

Windows 95/98/ME

Manually deleting ‘undeletable’ files in Windows 95, 98, or ME is pretty much the same process as in Windows XP, however there is the added step of needing to boot your system to the DOS prompt. Still, before doing this you need to carry out steps 1-5 as above to locate the file. From step 6 you will need a boot disk as supplied with your Operating System.

1. Click Start – Search – For Files or Folders - All files and folders.

2. Type in the name of the file you want deleting.

3. Click Search and the file should be displayed in the right hand pane in Search Results.

4. Once the file is located, right-click it and choose properties. Make a note of the file location. i.e C:\Documents and Setting\My Documents\undeletablefilesname.

5. Close the search box and all other program windows.

6. Insert the boot disk and proceed to shut down and restart your computer.

7. The computer will boot up and display a DOS prompt, i.e. c:\

8. As before navigate to the directory where the file resides, i.e. cd c:\Documents and Settings\My Documents.

9. Enter the command to delete the file, i.e. del ‘undeleteablefilename’.

10. Remove the boot disk and restart your computer.

Once the boot disk was used to start your machine, no other programs were running to cause permissions issues. As such the file could be deleted via the DOS command prompt.

This is a guest post by Neil Henry, a technology enthusiast.