[gwhirsch]

I recently had to recover a lot of files for a couple of friends whose hard drive got corrupted and had to be replaced. I merely attached the drive as a slave on one of my systems and copied the files to a temporary directory on my XP system and burned them to a CD for them. I wanted to delete the files and directories from by system, but now most of them . . . about 98% . . . have a .lock extension and will not allow me to remove. I tried to Google the situation, but can find very little info on what XP is doing to place the .lock on the file and how to get it off. Can anyone help with this?

Thanks.

Gary

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the 'lock' filetype is a new one to me, but my usual methid of dealing with stubborn files in Windows XP is as follows:

1. Open a command-prompt window.
2. Invoke task manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and end the EXPLORER.EXE process. Taskbar and desktop icons will disappear.
3. leave Task manager running.
4. In the DOS windows, navigate to the folder containing the locked files.
5. Type "DEL *.*" (without quotes)
6. Close the DOS window.
7. In Task manager, go to 'File' - 'New task' and browse to C:\Windows\Explorer.exe, highlight it and click OK.
8. Alternatively, use task manager to log-off under the 'Users' tab, then log-on again.

[pip22]

the 'lock' filetype is a new one to me, but my usual methid of dealing with stubborn files in Windows XP is as follows:

1. Open a command-prompt window.
2. Invoke task manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and end the EXPLORER.EXE process. Taskbar and desktop icons will disappear.
3. leave Task manager running.
4. In the DOS windows, navigate to the folder containing the locked files.
5. Type "DEL *.*" (without quotes)
6. Close the DOS window.
7. In Task manager, go to 'File' - 'New task' and browse to C:\Windows\Explorer.exe, highlight it and click OK.
8. Alternatively, use task manager to log-off under the 'Users' tab, then log-on again.

[gwhirsch]

This process would only remove files without the .lock extension. All you get is an Access Denied message for all of the .lock files.

Any other ideas?

[mistacles]

Try one of these.

http://www.bleepingc...les/killbox.php

http://www.snapfiles...moveonboot.html

[gwhirsch]

Tried them both, neither one would delete the file(s)! Any other suggestions from anyone?

[Murray S.]

Howdy:

Have you tried taking ownership of them and then deleting them??

Murray

[gwhirsch]

Yes! I'm listed as the owner of the file and that didn't help. I also tried logging in as administrator and deleting them, that didn't work. What's strange is that it's only two directories that I created where I recovered files for people and then burned them to CD quite some time ago? I recently did the same for two other friends and I could delete those directories without any problem. I can't for the life of me figure what could have placed the .lock extension on the end of only those files in those directories? And it's a LOT of files, especially a lot of jpg pictures of family and such. I saw a mention somewhere that WinXP will do this with jpg and avi type files, but there are a few docs and exe files that also got the .lock extension. Nothing I try will let me touch the file?