Every now and again, you will find yourself trying to delete a file only to be given an error message that says you are not allowed. “Access is denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write protected and that the file is not currently in use,” says the error message. Or maybe it says, “This file is currently in use by another program.” It may tell you, “There has been a sharing violation,” or “The source or destination file may be in use,” or so

mething similar. Whatever the exact message says will depend on your operating system and the specific problem that's being caused, but the result is the same – you are trying to get rid of a file of some sort, and your system just refuses to let you do it.

 

 

This commonly happens with adware and spyware. These files appear to be undeleteable by any normal method of deletion. So if the file is in use and you can't delete it, how do you get rid of it? Fortunately, there are a few ways you can go about getting rid of that nasty piece of work, and you do not need an IT degree or to pay an expensive computer technician down at the computer shop to do it!

 

If you are running Windows XP, you can remove the file manually. To do this, you first need to find the exact location to the file and its path. To find it, type the name of the undelete-able file into your Search box. To get to the Search box, go to the Start button, then Search, then All Files and Folders. Make sure the the “Look in” box shows the right drive, then click on Search to let your computer track the file down for you. Once it is located, right click on it and choose Properties. Make a note of the file location for your reference by writing it down somewhere.

 

Then close the search box. Click on Start, then Run, and type “CMD” without the quotation marks into the Run field. Hit Enter and wait for Command Prompt to open up. If you have any other programs open at this point, shut them all down, leaving Command Prompt open. Go back to Start, then Run, and type “taskmgr.exe” into the field, without the quotation marks. This will open your task manager. Click on the Proccesses tab, and then click on the process called Explorer.exe and end it.

 

Now head back to Command Prompt. Change to the directory where the offending file is located. To delete the file, type DEL <the filename>, where <the filename> is actually the file you want to get rid of. Now go back to the Task Manager, and click File, then New Task, then type “explorer.exe” without the quotation marks to start your Windows shell back up. Offending file is now gone and you have deleted the undelete-able!