I made a divx video file with a trial version of Dr. DivX. Its supposed to be one of the easy to use programs without all the complicated settings that Tony was talking about in a different thread a few weeks ago. The program had an error at the end of making the file and locked up. Now I have a file on my computer that I cant move, rename, delete etc. It says that the file is being used by another program if I try and do one of these things. I can play it though and it works fine. I closed everything in the task manager and it still says another program is using it. I checked the properties on it and its not read-only. Is it really being used by another program or does this have something to do with the error that happened? How can I delete this file? Oh, and I'm running XP

Reboot?

WhoLockMe

Hmm, that page appears to no longer exist. I'll attach the installer to this post.

Even if you closed all the programs in Task Manager, there are still processes running that can be using the file. For example, I've noticed that several P2P programs don't appear in the Applications tab of the Task Manager when minimized to the system tray. Many times when you want to move a file that has just been downloaded from that program, you get the message that the file is in use, because the program is using it.

In every case, the program using the file must be shut down before anything can be done with it (aside from opening a new instance of it, which can be done with most files, like playing a video in WMP while it's being uploaded to someone on Kazaa).

If you use the program I've attached and it says explorer.exe is using the file, it might be a case of the window the file is selected in is displaying the video on that preview pane of the web interface. Sometimes closing the folder will solve the problem, sometimes opening the folder and selecting another file (forcing a new preview) will do it.

Good luck!

I'm guessing the crashed program never closed the file. I'd have to go with ricin and reboot.

Well sure, you could also take the easy way out

Yeah, rebooting is the other way, since the program most likely won't be open when you start Windows.

But since this happens to me quite often, and I don't want to reboot more than I have to, I thought I'd explain what was going on and give that alternative.

FYI- In Windows NT based systems if the process is gone all of it's files will be closed. The process must exist to lock a file.

well i have to reboot windows 98 so many times everyday that i've gotten used to it.

FYI- In Windows NT based systems if the process is gone all of it's files will be closed. The process must exist to lock a file.

That's a good feature.

Sometimes I've found that virus scanner software can lock up very large files. As said elsewhere in this thread, peer-to-peer sharing programs can do that, too. Or any program that tries to scan your hard disk for media files.

I forgot to say that I've already tried rebooting, several times in fact. I couldn't get that wholockme program to work. Closing my antivirus software did the trick though. Any explanation for why this would lock the program? Thanks for the help.

I just saw something I've never seen Windows do before. In explorer, the name and information about file I was having trouble with was blue after I turned off my antivirus. All the other text was black like it always has been. Why was it blue?

If your using Windows XP and I can't delete, move, or edit this .avi video file from Windows Explorer. Here is how to do it.

Open Regedit (start->run->"regedit"), and go to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}\InProcServer32 . Delete this key.

Google Groups talking about this issue.

Why was it blue?

It was compressed or encrypted or on offline storage. Or you've got some other shell extension installed that colours files (TortoiseCVS is one that does this).

Any explanation for why this would lock the program? Thanks for the help.

Sure. The live checker part of your virus scanner is scanning the file. Since AVI's of movies tend to be VERY large, it could take a while for the scanner to finish its work. Every time you click on a file or a program tries to access it, it gets scanned.

That makes sense, but I've never had this problem with other large video files. Its only been a problem with this one file that had an error when it was being created.