Deleting a video file that won't delete?
 

I'm having a weird problem, everytime I try to delete a certain video file, it won't delete. It just freezes up every single time, no matter how I try to delete it.

I was watching it last night, it worked fine for about 56 mins, then it froze up & after that, it won't re-open and it won't let me delete it.

I've tried right clicking and deleting it, I've tried dragging it to the recycle bin, I've tried mousing over it & pressing delete on my keyboard, and nothing works, it just freezes up everytime.

What can I do to get rid of it?

have you tried rebooting the computer?
also can try booting in safe mode.
is this a video file you created or something you downloaded from the internet?

Yes, once I try to delete it, everything freezes up & all that I can do is hold my power button down until the computer shuts off. It happens every single time.

I actually tried safe mode last night, but when I did that, it went to a black screen where it said it was loading files and a bunch of things were on there, but when it went to desktop, it wasn't in safe mode. I thought that was weird.

The video file is a torrent file. After the torrent downloaded, this video file was created. I have several of them & I've never had a problem deleting any of the other ones.

it is probably malware.
what do you use for anti-virus?

i only download torrents from VIP and trusted users on Piratebay
there is just far too much crap out there

norton security suite. i've tried doing 2 scans lately, but both times it seems to get stuck on this one file, x86 or something like that

Norton sucks - its a HUGE resource hog and worse than the virus' it is supposedly protecting you from.
and it aint even free...

what OS are you running?
i run Microsoft Security Essentials and Super Anti-Spyware - both are free

vista. i downloaded the super anti spyware, it removed over 600 things, then i tried again in safe mode , but it still wouldn't delete. becoming very stressful, that's for sure

I suggest trying to delete the file via the command prompt. Start Menu > Accessories > Command Prompt.
You will need to navigate to the location of the file within the command prompt and try to delete it from there.

Have you installed any codec packs? Sometimes a corrupt codec can cause a system to hang when you click on a video file. It's mainly with Windows generating the thumbnail for the video file. It could also be that the video file itself is corrupt.

And as volksjager mentioned, Norton is crap. I also recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.

how do i know which one i should get, the microsoft security essentials, or the microsoft security esssentials 64 bit?

i'm running vista

go to control panel > system to check what version you are running
if you are running 32 bit Vista get 32 bit
if you are running 64 bit Vista get 64 bit

I am curious on how this issue(s) will be resolved.
There are progs. to delete corrupt files....yet there seems to be evidence of malware present.
It may be good to have an OS disc ready.

i've ran a few specific malware scans, but nothing was found...

i deleted norton & installed the microsoft security, but the problems still exist. not being able to delete a video file, or even open one. it's extremely frustrating. i thought about deleting the whole folder, but i got several videos in there that i want to put on dvd still. i thought about transferring them to another hard drive, but i can't even right click on a video file to select "send to" because the computer freezes up even by just doing that.

very strange...
if neither MSE or SAS found anything i would doubt virus
the file just must be corrupt of something.
try running CCcleaner - both cleaner and registry - run the registry cleaner a few times until it finds nothing.
then restart.

I just tried it with CCleaner. It took about 4 tries to go thru the registry before it was done, however it didn't fix the problem.

It's weird, when I open the folder where my videos are at, you know how the green bar at the top of the screen goes from the left side to the right side, then everything is done loading? Mine goes until about the end, and always stops, it never finishes & that's when everything ends up freezing up I've noticed.

Use Unlocker: http://www.emptyloop.com/unlocker

That seemed to work. As soon as I downloaded it, everything seemed to delete perfectly & play just fine. No freezing at all. Thanks yet again!

great to hear!
as a plus you now have a better anti-virus and i bet your PC is running a bit faster.
run CCcleaner once a month or so to prevent the registry from getting that bad.

I use Unlocker daily, both on the desktop and on the server.
Windows "locks" files, sometimes for no reason, so that's the only way to get at them.

- Video files locked by a player
- Audio files locked by a player
- PHP files locked by IIS7
- etc etc

That'll do it for you. I keep it installed for when I need it. Right-click a file, an Unlocker is right there.

i can't seem to turn it off. the unlocker assistant always loads down by the clock, is there a way to disable that, so that way i can only use when i need to, as you were saying? i can't seem to find a way to do that

open the start menu, type msconfig, go to startup and disable it, then restart
then it will only come on when you tell it to.
you can also do the same with other stuff you dont want running in the background.
it will speed the computer up as an aside.

the only thing i have enabled is microsoft security essentials.

Thanks! I actually was planning on asking that question, because there was some things loading on startup that I didn't want. I was able to disable them thru Norton, but once I uninstalled that, they came up again.

In the startup tab where I disabled unlocker, it has many other things that I don't know what they are.

Synaptics Pointing Device Drive

IDT PC audio

Intel (R) common Userface (that's listed 3 times, one on top of the other)

Raid event monitor

Microsoft security client

Java Platform SE auto updater

Do I need any of these check marked, or can I uncheck all of them?