Delete Undeletable Files
Ever had files that you cannot delete on Windows XP? Or have files that say it is still running while trying to delete it? Well here is the solution that will save you money instead of having some “computer expert” do it for you!
Open the command prompt by going to Start -> Run -> type in either “cmd” or “command” without the quotes. Leave this command prompt window open, then close out any other programs that are running. Then press Alt + Ctrl + Del on your keyboard, this will open the Task Manager. Keep this open as well. Then click on the Processes tab, and find the process called ‘explorer.exe’. Click on this process, explorer.exe, and click on ‘End Process,’ but do not close out the task manager yet! Also, do not panic because your taskbar and other things are not showing up. This is normal. Now go back to the command prompt, if it is not showing up, and hopefully you didn’t close it out, press Alt + Tab on your keyboard to switch to the command prompt. Now type in the place where you the file is located, for instance if your hard drive is on the C: drive and the file is on the C: drive, you can leave it if the command prompt says ‘C:\>’ but if it doesn’t just type in ‘cd C:\’ to switch to your hard drive or the other location. Then type in “DEL ‘filename’, but change the ‘filename’ to name of the file that you want to delete, and remove the quotes, all of them when entering it in! Then hit enter. Now go back to the task manager, by press Alt + Tab if you need to, and navigate to ‘New -> New Task(Run..) -> then type in ‘explorer.exe without the quotes. Now your taskbar and everything else is coming back. With this said, you can go ahead and close out the command prompt and task manager!
Here is another option you can take.
Open Notepad, if you do not know how to open it, go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad. Then click ‘File -> Save As’ and navigate to the folder where the undeletable file is. Once there, it might not show it, this is because it is only showing ‘text’ files. To change this to ‘All Files’ look at the bottom under ‘File Name,’ which says ‘Save as type’ and change it from ‘Text Documents’ to ‘All Files.’ Then click on the file you want to open. Do not double click on it or open it! That is because all you are doing is changing the file name a little bit. Now that it is showing up in the ‘File Name’ box, add a quotation to the beginning and end so it will look like this: “file.exe” where the ‘file.exe’ is the name of the undeletable file. Now click on the ‘Save’ button. It should ask you if you want to overwrite the file, click on ‘Yes.’ Now you can delete the file like any ordinary file on Windows XP! Good luck!