Cannot delete 0 b file on desktop

[Fajardo]

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I am running a laptop with Windows XP Pro OS, everything is working fine except one problem. There are few files kept on my desktop from a week and are useless now. Whenever I try to delete them, I get an error saying this:

Error Deleting File or Folder
Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk.

I checked my task manager and there are no process using these files, than why is it not able to be deleted? Please help.

[anshusehgal]

It sounds strange if you have check Task manager and there are no process running that what could be using these files that is preventing to get deleted. Because such error occurs only when the files is in use by some program. Anyways, what you can here is download Process Explorer from here

This will help you to find out what is that using the files and preventing them to be removed. You can do this by clicking on find handle on the top of this explorer and typing the file name. if you found any program, simply kill it and now try deleting the file. It should work.

[Fajardo]

Thanks for the help and download url anshusehgal. I tried as you said but neither Handle or DLL Substring search available in the process Explorer are able to search those files. I tried searching some another files and it can be located but not the one I want to delete. I check the file properties and shows me zero bytes. Now this is new for me. What else can I try?

[anshusehgal]

As you said the file is zero bytes, I think it is corrupted and unreadable hence process explorer is unable to locate it. In such case you should try booting your system to Recovery Console and running chkdsk /r. It will repair or delete the file automatically. it

Also i had once such problem and in my case i created a new file with the same name and overwrite with that undeletable file. And that helped me to delete it later. You should try this as well.

[Mr. Boo Bear]

If you have problems like "Error cannot delete file: cannot read from source file or disk" , one of the best tools for solving this would be Long Path Tool found at LongPathTool. You can download the same by searching it on the net. Long Path Tool can simplify and probably end your problems in unlocking, managing and renaming files that appear to have a long filename.