Hi Folks, Found on the Sunday Times "Doors"/"Don't Panic" web page this morning:
The Sunday Times - Doors
The Sunday Times September 03, 2006
Don't panic Nigel Powell answers your technology queries
Q: I have an AVI file that I cannot delete. Help! Waleed El Tair, via e-mail
A: Try creating a simple text file. Give it the same name as the file you want to delete, and copy it into the same directory. When Windows asks to overwrite, click yes, and delete. Alternatively, change your Windows Explorer view to icons and try again. If this fails, go to Start, Run and type in "cmd". Once the command prompt appears, type regsvr32/ u shmedia.dll, then delete the file.
That's pure Kafka! I'm so glad I don't live in that world!
Good morning! Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Sep-06 Time: 08:38:33 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On 9/3/06, Ted Harding Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
Q: I have an AVI file that I cannot delete. Help! Waleed El Tair, via e-mail
Presumably a movie player still had the file open. In the Unix world the file will appear deleted, but still be on the disk until the application quit, closed the file handle, and reduced the reference count to zero.
Tim.
On 03-Sep-06 Tim Green wrote:
On 9/3/06, Ted Harding Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
Q: I have an AVI file that I cannot delete. Help! Waleed El Tair, via e-mail
Presumably a movie player still had the file open. In the Unix world the file will appear deleted, but still be on the disk until the application quit, closed the file handle, and reduced the reference count to zero.
Tim.
I think I may have tracked down what the real problem is in such cases. It seems that Win Explorer puts up thumbnail "previews" of .avi (and other media) files, which cannot be deleted unless the preview action is turned off! Google on
regsvr32 avi
See e.g.:
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=89#body
So it looks as though it's basically what you say, except that it's not being really played, only accessed for the purpose of making icons in Explorer.
Oh dear! Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Sep-06 Time: 10:07:27 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
-
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tim Green