Windows XP File System / Explorer Issues
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I run Windows XP Professional on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8200. I don't use Plus! or any such nonsense and while I do have most of the new "pretty" "useless" Windows XP effects like the start bar and animations, I always disable that whole preview pane crap in explorer and go with the simple old-style view. At any rate, I have a problem deleting files to the point that sometimes I'm ready to fling this laptop out the window... (this also happens on my regular box at home)... when I try to delete a file, many, many times, Windows tells me the file is in use. If I click on a different file, then right-click the file I want gone and choose delete that sometimes works. It always works from a Command prompt. This drives me crazy. Anyone run into this kind of thing?
I've seen this quite a bit with media files. Seems the shell likes to spend time trying to generate a thumbnail, load a music/video file into preview, etc.
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I run Windows XP Professional on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8200. I don't use Plus! or any such nonsense and while I do have most of the new "pretty" "useless" Windows XP effects like the start bar and animations, I always disable that whole preview pane crap in explorer and go with the simple old-style view. At any rate, I have a problem deleting files to the point that sometimes I'm ready to fling this laptop out the window... (this also happens on my regular box at home)... when I try to delete a file, many, many times, Windows tells me the file is in use. If I click on a different file, then right-click the file I want gone and choose delete that sometimes works. It always works from a Command prompt. This drives me crazy. Anyone run into this kind of thing?
Media files ? I had this sort of problem with video files, whenever you highlight a file or even hover over it, explorer extracts some extra file properties (format, length, bitrate, etc) and locks the file. I solved this by unregistering
shimgvw.dllandshmedia.dll. No adverse sideeffects.Bruce Duncan, CP#9088, CPUA 0xA1EE, Sonork 100.10030
Blackadder: Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick: Yeah, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made of iron. -
Media files ? I had this sort of problem with video files, whenever you highlight a file or even hover over it, explorer extracts some extra file properties (format, length, bitrate, etc) and locks the file. I solved this by unregistering
shimgvw.dllandshmedia.dll. No adverse sideeffects.Bruce Duncan, CP#9088, CPUA 0xA1EE, Sonork 100.10030
Blackadder: Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick: Yeah, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made of iron.Yeah, I guess it really is usually media files. I've been organizing my personal MP3's and videos lately and was getting really irritated with this. Thanks a lot. I'll give it a shot.
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I run Windows XP Professional on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8200. I don't use Plus! or any such nonsense and while I do have most of the new "pretty" "useless" Windows XP effects like the start bar and animations, I always disable that whole preview pane crap in explorer and go with the simple old-style view. At any rate, I have a problem deleting files to the point that sometimes I'm ready to fling this laptop out the window... (this also happens on my regular box at home)... when I try to delete a file, many, many times, Windows tells me the file is in use. If I click on a different file, then right-click the file I want gone and choose delete that sometimes works. It always works from a Command prompt. This drives me crazy. Anyone run into this kind of thing?
I've seen this happening on my W2K box, mostly after copy-pasting files. Most annoying. I haven't found any solution than to reboot... VictorV
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I've seen this happening on my W2K box, mostly after copy-pasting files. Most annoying. I haven't found any solution than to reboot... VictorV
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I run Windows XP Professional on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8200. I don't use Plus! or any such nonsense and while I do have most of the new "pretty" "useless" Windows XP effects like the start bar and animations, I always disable that whole preview pane crap in explorer and go with the simple old-style view. At any rate, I have a problem deleting files to the point that sometimes I'm ready to fling this laptop out the window... (this also happens on my regular box at home)... when I try to delete a file, many, many times, Windows tells me the file is in use. If I click on a different file, then right-click the file I want gone and choose delete that sometimes works. It always works from a Command prompt. This drives me crazy. Anyone run into this kind of thing?
Hmmm. Now you are making me worried. We have been having a ton of file locking problems of late. We thought it was down to our network getting overloaded (every 10th or so login my profile refuses to load. I have to logout and log back in, then it works.) We are running Windows XP Pro on the desktops with W2K on the server. But it happens on all sorts of files. Word, PNG, JPEG, MP3 etc. The problem is normally sorted when we reboot the desktop that made the file or last modified it. Sometimes though it requires the server to reboot. The best was the other day: I delete an entire folder off a shared directory. It said it was succesfully deleted and even showed it disapearing. I refreshed the view, and hey presto the folder was back. I locked one of the files, deleted the directory, it deleted! But then it came back (file remained open.) Eventually I rebooted the server and the directory disapeared. Very odd.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
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Using task manager to kill explorer also works. After killing it, using the task manager to start a new explorer gets the start menu back up. Tim Smith I'm going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.
Tim Smith wrote: Using task manager to kill explorer also works. After killing it, using the task manager to start a new explorer gets the start menu back up. We have tried that, to no avail. Always requires a full reboot for us.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
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Hmmm. Now you are making me worried. We have been having a ton of file locking problems of late. We thought it was down to our network getting overloaded (every 10th or so login my profile refuses to load. I have to logout and log back in, then it works.) We are running Windows XP Pro on the desktops with W2K on the server. But it happens on all sorts of files. Word, PNG, JPEG, MP3 etc. The problem is normally sorted when we reboot the desktop that made the file or last modified it. Sometimes though it requires the server to reboot. The best was the other day: I delete an entire folder off a shared directory. It said it was succesfully deleted and even showed it disapearing. I refreshed the view, and hey presto the folder was back. I locked one of the files, deleted the directory, it deleted! But then it came back (file remained open.) Eventually I rebooted the server and the directory disapeared. Very odd.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
Yeah, this sounds a little more in line with the problems I see. I see worse as well... For instance I regularly hit my little Windows key and "E" to bring up explorer. Often times this locks up explorer and the desktop for as much as 30 seconds... then all of a sudden it all comes back. This happens FREQUENTLY.
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Yeah, this sounds a little more in line with the problems I see. I see worse as well... For instance I regularly hit my little Windows key and "E" to bring up explorer. Often times this locks up explorer and the desktop for as much as 30 seconds... then all of a sudden it all comes back. This happens FREQUENTLY.
Matt Philmon wrote: Often times this locks up explorer and the desktop for as much as 30 seconds... then all of a sudden it all comes back. This happens FREQUENTLY. Hmmm. That does not happen to me. Just file locking. Otherwise XP works well.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
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I run Windows XP Professional on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8200. I don't use Plus! or any such nonsense and while I do have most of the new "pretty" "useless" Windows XP effects like the start bar and animations, I always disable that whole preview pane crap in explorer and go with the simple old-style view. At any rate, I have a problem deleting files to the point that sometimes I'm ready to fling this laptop out the window... (this also happens on my regular box at home)... when I try to delete a file, many, many times, Windows tells me the file is in use. If I click on a different file, then right-click the file I want gone and choose delete that sometimes works. It always works from a Command prompt. This drives me crazy. Anyone run into this kind of thing?
Shog's Rule of Windows Usage: Don't let explorer run for too long. Honest, that's it - I can go a week or more without rebooting and not have problems, so long as i don't leave any folder windows open, and kill the process once or twice. Explorer has its dirty little paws in just about everything that happens on Windows, and when it screws up you'll have hell to pay with things that should be totally unrelated. Keeping it fresh can save you much grief. and btw - on anything above Win95+IE3, IE == Explorer, so The Rule also applies. ---
My whole life I've practiced the art of self-sabotage -- fearing success perhaps even more than fearing failure. I think I have got this flareup resolved, but I'm constantly waiting to see what new and exciting ways I can spoil my chances for a better life. - koreykruse, Compulsive Skin Picking
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I run Windows XP Professional on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8200. I don't use Plus! or any such nonsense and while I do have most of the new "pretty" "useless" Windows XP effects like the start bar and animations, I always disable that whole preview pane crap in explorer and go with the simple old-style view. At any rate, I have a problem deleting files to the point that sometimes I'm ready to fling this laptop out the window... (this also happens on my regular box at home)... when I try to delete a file, many, many times, Windows tells me the file is in use. If I click on a different file, then right-click the file I want gone and choose delete that sometimes works. It always works from a Command prompt. This drives me crazy. Anyone run into this kind of thing?
Sorry for being late to the discussion, but... Get the Handle utility (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/handle.shtml[^]) from SysInternals. Pipe the output to a file, load it up with Notepad and search for the file you were trying to delete. That should tell you which process is keeping a lock on the file. (In all likelihood it's Explorer itself)