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Originally Posted by Catdaddy33
I have a file that I'm trying to delete and I keep getting an error message that says "unable to delete, this file is being used by another application, please exit the application" or something like that. Is there an easy way to see what progam is using this file so I can stop it and delete the program?
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Sadly, there is no simple method to do so and certainly no built-in mechanism for reporting such obviously useful information. However, there is a free utility that will let you discover what you want to know.
It's called
Process Explorer and it's available for free download from your friends (who wrote it) at
SysInternals. It's like Task Mananager, only more powerful.
Just install Process Explorer and run it. You will see a family tree of processes. Go to the "Find" menu and select "Find Handle..." and type in the file name you are looking for. What this will do is search through
all running processes for an open handle to a file matching that name. If the file really is locked by another process, this will reveal what that process is. After you've figured out what process has locked this file, you can decide what to do about it.
Incidentally, if it's an .exe, then it sounds pretty suspcious that it's locked. I mean, are you sure it's not running? I know you checked your processes but... check again. I don't know what you think might "use" a .exe file but perhaps you didn't actually check to see if
it was running...
Of course, you can try to boot into safe mode and hope it won't be running but... who wants to reboot?