Vista undeleteable file

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-07-23 11:58pm

I have a file that Will Not Die. It won't move or copy either, but it's just a Mass Effect trailer so I'm fine with deleting it. It also say's it's 12.3Mb when it's really about 50. Telling it to delete gives me the 'deleting' window and never goes anywhere. Right clicking on it takes about a million years to open the menu pane. Clicking properties crashes explorer.

I'm curious how this happened, because it's fucking annoying. I'm also interested in ideas of how I can get this shit the fuck off my computer.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-07-24 12:00am

Have you tried using the command prompt to delete it? Also, I've found that Vista is notorious about having some files taking up system resources. So it may be that you just need to reboot.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-07-24 12:07am

Sigh. I don't mean to sound rude, but when someone says 'have you tried command prompt' and 'reboot', I just want to fucking stab them. Yes, I've fucking tried the command prompt. Yes, I've rebooted. What am I, a monkey? My first option when confronted with a problem is not to ask people who might say 'hmm try rebooting', sorry.

It won't delete in safe mode, I'm clean of viruses and spyware, and nothing is running that is holding it open. I tried unlocker, and it gave me a permissions debug error. I've run scandisk, I've tried copying a known-good copy over the same file, all with no success. The file plays fine (it jumps a bit at the start), but I can't find anything that will allow me to change anything about it.

It seems obvious that the file is simply corrupt and I can't write to it. Is there a tool to let me just remove it from the filesystem? And don't say 'lol del lol'.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-07-24 12:23am

My next stab at it would be to run Chkdsk /f (which will require a restart) and then try deleting it.

Alternatively, maybe try deleting it while running in Safe Mode?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-07-24 12:31am

Uraniun235 wrote:My next stab at it would be to run Chkdsk /f (which will require a restart) and then try deleting it.

Alternatively, maybe try deleting it while running in Safe Mode?

I already did that. Unless chkdsk /f is different to the 'schedule scandisk' thing (which I doubt, since it appears scandisk=chkdsk these days). It didn't turn anything up.

Deleting in safe mode (as mentioned above) didn't work. I get the same 'sit on deleting window' result as usual.

Darth Mordius · Post by **Darth Mordius** » 2007-07-24 12:53am

Does Move on Boot work in Vista? Worth a shot anyway.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-07-24 12:53am

Stark wrote:Sigh. I don't mean to sound rude, but when someone says 'have you tried command prompt' and 'reboot', I just want to fucking stab them. Yes, I've fucking tried the command prompt. Yes, I've rebooted. What am I, a monkey? My first option when confronted with a problem is not to ask people who might say 'hmm try rebooting', sorry.

It won't delete in safe mode, I'm clean of viruses and spyware, and nothing is running that is holding it open. I tried unlocker, and it gave me a permissions debug error. I've run scandisk, I've tried copying a known-good copy over the same file, all with no success. The file plays fine (it jumps a bit at the start), but I can't find anything that will allow me to change anything about it.

It seems obvious that the file is simply corrupt and I can't write to it. Is there a tool to let me just remove it from the filesystem? And don't say 'lol del lol'.

Eh, those options always worked whenever I've come across a file that wouldn't delete (which very rarely happens).

Just as one more possibly silly "obvious" option, have you tried moving the file to a different directory before hitting the delete button, as opposed to copying a "good" file onto the bad one?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-07-24 01:10am

I hate to sound like a crankypants, but my very first post says I can't move it.

There's got to be a soft out there to just zap it off the filesystem. No checks, no examinations, just remove the entry and huzzah. I don't want a zombie video on my desktop!

EDIT - Mordius, that's an interesting idea, I'll give it a go. I've tried safe mode though, which suggests it's not being 'held open'. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

Post by **Edi** » 2007-07-24 01:39am

It's also possible that you might be stuck with that file until Microsoft releases a patch to fix the problem. Undeletable files on Vista as well as inability to move files is a known Vista problem that has been fairly widespread but has not affected all systems. You can probably find more information from MS support pages and forums. I have no idea how to fix that, but the general impression I got from the articles I read (admittedly a few months back) was that if the problem manifests, the user is fucked.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-07-24 01:43am

Edi wrote:It's also possible that you might be stuck with that file until Microsoft releases a patch to fix the problem. Undeletable files on Vista as well as inability to move files is a known Vista problem that has been fairly widespread but has not affected all systems. You can probably find more information from MS support pages and forums. I have no idea how to fix that, but the general impression I got from the articles I read (admittedly a few months back) was that if the problem manifests, the user is fucked.

Oh I see. Thanks for the heads-up, I'll stop wasting my time. I'd pretty much exhausted all my options before I posted, so perhaps I'll just wait for a fix.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2007-07-24 01:52am

A last idea is use Process Explorer to search to see if anything has a handle to it open, and forcefully close that handle.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-07-24 02:38am

Oh wait! I remember what I did when I had something like this in XP! (or was it 2K...)

Open a command prompt and Task Manager. Navigate to where the file is in the command prompt and get ready to delete the file. Using Task Manager, end the explorer.exe process. Then try deleting the file through the command prompt.

When you're done, whether or not it was successful, you can go to File -> Run in Task Manager and type in Explorer and your desktop should come right back.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-07-24 02:52am

Beowulf wrote:A last idea is use Process Explorer to search to see if anything has a handle to it open, and forcefully close that handle.

Yeah, I'd looked through already: no links to the file.

U235 wrote:Oh wait! I remember what I did when I had something like this in XP! (or was it 2K...)

Open a command prompt and Task Manager. Navigate to where the file is in the command prompt and get ready to delete the file. Using Task Manager, end the explorer.exe process. Then try deleting the file through the command prompt.

When you're done, whether or not it was successful, you can go to File -> Run in Task Manager and type in Explorer and your desktop should come right back.

Heh, I've never tried doing anything while Explorer is gone - Vista brings it back pretty quick-smart, though. Worth a shot, though, and it's an interesting idea.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2007-07-24 02:54am

One more thing to attempt, although very similar to what you already tried so it probably won't work, is to open up notepad and just save the empty file over it. That sometimes succeeds and allows you to delete the empty file afterwards.

BTW, Unlocker doesn't seem to work under Vista, despite what the author claims. I've never managed to get something to close the handle with it. Use Process explorer.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2007-07-24 03:42am

Does this Vista still retain that old MSDOS prompt safe mode? Is this command prompt in the Vista itself?

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-07-24 05:02am

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Does this Vista still retain that old MSDOS prompt safe mode? Is this command prompt in the Vista itself?

Window's hasn't run ontop of real MSDOS for decades

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2007-07-24 05:29am

Resinence wrote:
Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Does this Vista still retain that old MSDOS prompt safe mode? Is this command prompt in the Vista itself?
Window's hasn't run ontop of real MSDOS for decades

Win95/98/Me if I recall, had a 16 bit component that was in some ways tied to MSDOS. Incidentally, they came with MSDOS 7.0 and can be accessed if one presses the F8 key on start up and chooses the MSDOS prompt option.

For XP, if I am not wrong, it was an emulation but it nevertheless provided a MSDOS like command prompt interface.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-07-24 05:46am

Win98 came out almost 10 years ago, obviously "decades" was hyperbole

XP had a Dos emulator just like Vista does, but it's not part of the OS anymore and you cannot access it on startup. All of the WinNT line runs without the need of DOS, part of the reason microsoft adopted it for the clients as well as servers over Win32 (a mistake in my opinion, they should have just used a new CLI without the memory limitations of DOS, sometimes running without a GUI is useful). Vista has safe mode but all it does is load a different hardware profile that doesn't include non-MS drivers and disables some services.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2007-07-24 05:49am

Resinence wrote:Win98 came out almost 10 years ago, obviously "decades" was hyperbole

XP had a Dos emulator just like Vista does, but it's not part of the OS anymore and you cannot access it on startup. All of the WinNT line runs without the need of DOS, part of the reason microsoft adopted it for the clients as well as servers over Win32 (a mistake in my opinion, they should have just used a new CLI without the memory limitations of DOS, sometimes running without a GUI is useful). Vista has safe mode but all it does is load a different hardware profile that doesn't include non-MS drivers and disables some services.

My original idea was that in the MSDOS mode, very few services are running, and it might remove any possible conflicts that might otherwise exist.

But you are right nonetheless.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-07-24 05:53am

Come to think of it, the whole "lets remove the CLI or hide it so it's hard to find (looking at you apple)" is stupid, what? They think end users will trash their PC when they don't even know what a command is or how to get the CLI to do anything at all besides print "error command not found"? Or accidently boot into command prompt mode and not just restart the PC again?

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2007-07-24 06:31am

Worse comes to worse, boot using the Recover Console which you get when booting off the CD. It has a proto-OS (nothing more than the ability to move/delete files and switch a few hardcoded settings types).

Also scandisk (chkdsk.exe) can scan for bad sectors which might be why the file cant be deleted (chkdsk.exe /r). Either that or poll the harddrive's SMART status with something like HD Tune

Baka^Ni · Post by **Baka^Ni** » 2007-07-24 09:29am

If you still have xp on another partition, try deleting/moving from that. Alternatively, perhaps BartsPE livecd could help? (clutching at straws)

Gambler · Post by **Gambler** » 2007-07-24 09:57am

I had this same problem a few times in XP, don't know if this easy solution works in Vista thou. Don't try to delete the corrupted file, instead move all your other files in the same folder to a new folder which you can rename later. Now that you only have the corrupted file in the folder, try deleting the entire folder instead of the file. Most of the time this works in XP, well at least it's worth a try.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-07-24 09:59am

PS it was on my desktop, that would never work.

In any case I got rid of it by using a livecd to boot to another OS and deleting it from there. I guess I'll never know what the problem was, now.

TheFeniX · Post by **TheFeniX** » 2007-07-24 11:00am

I had this issue with XP a while back. It was for the "Half-Life in 45 minutes" speedrun. The file pegged out at 500+ megabytes and was stuck on the root of my D: drive.

For some reason, after I cleaned out a bunch of other files and defragmented, XP let me delete it. I have no idea why and I could find nothing on the issue.