gHacks technology news » delete-files-in-use http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Can’t delete virus ? Try Killbox http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/13/cant-delete-virus-try-killbox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/13/cant-delete-virus-try-killbox/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:06:41 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/13/cant-delete-virus-try-killbox/ You might have come upon this problem during scans for viruses and Trojans on your system. A malicious file was identified by your favorite virus scanner and it prompts for action. You can delete, move, rename or move the file into quarantine. It is however not possible to delete malicious files when you choose to delete them because they are currently in use and can’t be therefor deleted.

One way to cope with the situation would be use the freeware Pocket Killbox which deletes selected files before the next system start. Simply start Pocket Killbox and navigate to the file that was identified as a virus. Select delete on reboot and hit the red X icon on the upper right corner of Pocket Killbox. It will prompt for a reboot, select yes and the virus should be automatically deleted during startup.

Just perform a second scan to make sure the virus was really deleted b Pocket Killbox. Another way would be to use the great free program Unlocker which will kill every process that is keeping the file busy. This would mean that you can delete the file in Windows directly without rebooting your computer. It might however have problems with some special system files that have been infected.

Just try both methods and start with Unlocker. Reference to Pocket Killbox first seen on Technibble.

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