How do I delete a file that Windows thinks is “being used by another person or program,” but that in fact is not “being used by another person or program”?
Yes, I’ve restarted.
This happens all the time; mostly, it seems, with PhotoShop. It also happens when I go to save a file, says I can’t because it was “left open,” or something. Well duh, I’m still working on it. I’m tired of accumulating different versions of the same file simply because I can’t save an existing file without changing the name, or delete previous versions.
Perhaps try closing files before you close Photoshop?
But it sounds to me like either Photoshop or Windows is messed up on your computer. Possibly you have a bad install. You might try reinstalling Photoshop, but if that doesn’t fix it then you’re probably best to just live with it.
Start>Run enter “cmd”
From there you have to use DOS commands to navigate to the file and delete it. Most likely that still won’t make a difference.
OR
Boot like your going into safe mode and choose the option that says something about a command prompt, and do it from that prompt.
Personally I wouldn’t bother doing it that way (since, I take it, you’re not familiar with a command prompt to begin with) unless you couldn’t do it in safe mode.
Let me see if I understand. You open a file in Photoshop, modify it, and try to save (not “Save As…”) and it says that you can’t? Does this happen every time you do this, or only after you close and reopen Photoshop, or randomly, or what? It might be (like Sage Rat says) that Photoshop is failing to close completely, leaving various files “locked” and undeletable. You might check Task Manager to see if all of the Photoshop-related processes (possibly including things like scanner programs; watch what processes actually start when you start it up to see what the relevant processes are) actually terminate when you close Photoshop. A reinstall might help in that case, but I would guess more likely not. Sometimes manually killing the offending process solves the problem, but sometimes it doesn’t.
Windows allows processes to lock files to avoid corruption and I/O race conditions. Unfortunately, many applications seem to abuse this privilege, leaving things locked for no obvious reason, long after they’re done actually using them. There are applications out there (Google for “Windows file lock”; here is one) which will report on which processes have file locks and try to remove the locks. This is not an optimal solution, especially if it happens a lot, but it’s quicker than rebooting.
I use the one given in Omphaloskeptic’s post once in a great while.
E.g., my version of ACDsee will try to “run” a thumbs.db file and then I can’t delete it (or the directory it’s in, etc.) even if I close ACDsee. Usually I can fix things by starting a new version of ACDsee and then closing that
Try the later with your app. (Close the original. Start a new one. Close that.)
Doing things with the unlocker program requires that you be very, very careful about making sure that no program could possibly by using the file.
Download unlocker. It will delete the files in a couple steps, all of which are selections the program walks you through. It’s integrated into the righthand click funtion, so It’s easy to use, and fast. It’s free to use. http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/
I have a couple of shortcut icons on my desktop suffering from this. The application has been uninstalled, but Windows claims that the shortcut icon (of all things) is still in use by another program :rolleyes:
I have occaisonally been able to trick windows by using an ATTRIB command on the file through the command prompt. I’ve also successfully deleted one of these stubborn files by changing my drive letter, rebooting into safe mode and deleting, then changing the drive letter back.
Worst case, and what will absolutely work, is boot up into an alternate OS (like linux) and delete the file manually from there. You could probably use a bootable run-from-cd linux flavor (instead of having to install a new linux partition) and then delete the file.
(1) Open your task manager.
(2) Kill “explorer.exe”
(3) Start a new task called “cmd”
(4) From the command prompt, delete the files that Windows thinks are still open.
(5) Start another new task called “explorer”
(6) Profit!!