For a very long time I've had a stupid problem where I can't delete a large AVI file for no apparent reason. I would keep trying and it would eventually work, maybe after a restart or logoff, but not always. I tried all the delete tricks I could think of, and I even tried to see what program (my guess was explorer) had a handle on the file. Eventually I found the answer, and I'm posting to save sometime for whoever might read this.
Stolen from here.
I've seen this coming up more and more all over the place so I figured I'd stick it here.
Avi files (divx) can be trouble in xp. there is a fix to let xp behave much better so it's possible to move or delete large avi files. The obnoxious bug in XP that causes Explorer to read the entire contents of broken AVI files before allowing any access to them is caused by bad behavior of shmedia.dll.
To correct this misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\
{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}\InProcServer32
This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files.
Just an extra note, if you do a "search" for this key it will not be found, look for it manually it is very easy to find. As always newbie or not, if you FUBAR your registry its your own fault. This fix does work, I use it and have applied it to many XP machines. Now go ahead and fix this royal pain in the ass!
RiG
Well done Ram - I used to go to command prompt and delete from there. That would work abuot 90% of the time. But 90% isn't 100%.
Posted by: G at May 26, 2004 09:32 PMThanks for the tip Ram.
Posted by: Dan at May 26, 2004 11:47 PMnice. this is a pain. i still have some avi's sitting there i could never delete, now i just have to find them...
I've had the same problems ram. What I end up doing is watching to see when my hdisk stops reading, and then deleting the file in question. I find that seems to work, even if I have to wait for xp to finish doing its thing.
Posted by: jay-zee at June 12, 2004 03:59 PMHey! ITs been almost a month. POST SOMETHING!
Posted by: jay-zee at June 24, 2004 11:24 PM"quality, not quantity ram! remember the classy crack dealing writing and finish of the jacob's ladder column and don't deviate!
Posted by: leejz at January 18, 2004 03:39 PM"
I'm sticking to what I said and what you agreed with. If I've got something good to post, then I'll post. Posting something good takes effort unless you luck into something cool/interesting.
Posted by: Ram at June 26, 2004 11:43 AMJust applied this tip to a reformatted computer. Thanks to you, all my favourite tweaks are at one place.
huzzah for ramk.net!
Posted by: Dan at April 19, 2005 12:46 AM