Skip to main content

Deleting a file or folder in Windows but error since file or folder is open

Trying to delete a file or folder and unable to delete?
Window error suggests that file or folder is open by any program?
All permissions on file and ACLs look good and you technically have full access?
So what is using the file or folder and why?

Usually you could have a file opened by a program and closed but program may retain link to the fail until you close the program so try closing all open programs.
Again, pretty much every time you reboot your computer it works but in a busy life rebooting computer should not be today's requirement and why you can literally do anything and everything without a single reboot on Linux/Unix operating systems.

So you need to really find what program has the file open in Windows. This is not a built in feature of windows so you can't do it out of the box. You will have to download an extended Process Explorer from SysInternals that was bought by Microsoft since they started to know more about Windows than Microsoft so better eat that fish.

The MS KB Article 242131 suggest the procedure how to find the programs that have open files.

So you simply download SysInternals Process Explorer from Microsoft's site. Extract it into a folder, my favourite is "c:\program files\process explorer" and run the executable.

Simply click on Find from menu or binoculars icon and type the file name. This will give you exactly the where the file is being used. If you close or kill that process you will get the access back to the file or the folder it contained in.



Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Useful website performance and load testing tools

http://tsung.erlang-projects.org/ http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/ab.html http://phantomjs.org/ https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/ http://servermonitoringhq.com/blog/how_to_quickly_stress_test_a_web_server https://code.google.com/p/httperf/ http://loadimpact.com/ http://www.paessler.com/webstress http://loaduiweb.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server_benchmarking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_testing http://www.loadui.org/ http://www.loadtestingtool.com/index.shtml http://www.appdynamics.com/blog/devops/load-testing-tools-explained-the-server-side/
Read more

Copy files and folders using SCP with spaces in path

Copying data from one system to other with file or folder names that contain spaces in path can be achieved using this guide. In this case I am copying data from Macbook to Windows 10 computer. In order to copy the data easily it is better to use bash commands. Windows computer can support WSL (Windows subsystem for Linux) and you can run one of few linux distributions to use shell commands. I have Ubuntu set up within my Windows 10 using WSL. If you do not have WSL, you can set it up using my guide here . The copy can be performed in two ways: 1) Using SCP Source (MacOs) path: /home/Users/username/Documents/data extract from 2020/ First of all you add escape sequence to the path so it will become:  /home/Users/me/Documents/data\ extract\ from\ 2020/ . While this works on local system for SCP you'll have to double the escape sequences by replacing \ with \\, as below. Figure out your source computer IP address using "ifconfig" command. Now using scp command on target syst...
Read more

TrueCrypt on macOS X Mojave 10.14

If you have updated your macOS recently to Mojave otherwise known as verison 10.14 you may not be able to install the last version of Truecrypt in order to access your old volumes encrypted with Truecrypt software. This article will guide you to get this working on your MacOS v10.14 (Mjoave) . Download the package from  https://truecrypt.ch/downloads/  or  https://www.truecrypt71a.com/downloads/ . Find downloaded package using Finder in your HDD/Users/username/Downloads folder and will look like  TrueCrypt 7.1a Mac OS X.dmg . Open file location in Finder and open or double click on  TrueCrypt 7.1a Mac OS X.dmg . This will mount Truecrypt 7.1a and will have Truecrypt 7.1a.mpkg in it. Drag the package T rueCrypt 7.1a.mpkg and drop in your Downloads folder. From Locations in Finder you can eject your TrueCrypt mount. Now go to your Downloads location, find the file  TrueCrypt 7.1a.mpkg , right click and select Show Package Contents . Find the ...
Read more