Die, file, die!

Every time I try to move, delete or activate the file, my computer processes get slow. I usually end up rebooting. I’ve run all kinds of anti-virus, system diagnostics and spyware programs to try and to detect something, but have found nothing. I’ve even tried to change the file extension association of the file so I can delete it but to no avail.

I have a file on my computer that I downloaded from the Internet from a paid subscription site. It’s an AVI movie file. Each time I try to open it in a program i.e., Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc., it won’t open. When I try to delete the file it is in use by another process. Every time I try to move, delete or activate the file, my computer processes get slow. I usually end up rebooting. I’ve run all kinds of anti-virus, system diagnostics and spyware programs to try and to detect something, but have found nothing. I’ve even tried to change the file extension association of the file so I can delete it but to no avail.

— Benjamin Stukes

The first thing I would suggest is to boot your computer into safe mode. This should shut down all but the most basic processes on XP so that you can get access to the workstation. Press F8 just after XP starts its booting process.

Start by selecting the Safe Mode option at the top of the list. You should be able to manipulate the file at this point.

If this doesn’t work, restart the computer and select the Safe Mode boot with command mode option. This will stop the booting of XP just short of the GUI part.

Once this form of booting has completing you will see a DOS-like box appear on the screen. You will need to manually walk your way through the directory structure to where the file is. See if you can rename or delete the file depending on what you want to do at this point.

Still a problem? Time to turn to Linux. Download a version of Knoppix. Once you have downloaded an .ISO image and have it burned to CD, put the Knoppix CD into the CD drive and reboot the computer. Click on the mounted drive icon once the Knoppix CD is up and running. Walk you way down through the directory structure until the file is located. You should be able to either rename or delete the file. If the first two options didn’t work for you, this one certainly should as no part of XP is running to where the file should be in use by any process or application.