Can’t delete file from windows 7

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I am running Win7 home premium 64bit. I right click on a word doc and choose delete. Nothing happens. No hourglass, no error message, nothing, like I didn’t click delete. I’ve rebooted. I’ve disconnected my ext hdrive from my pc. Rebooted. Tried to delete – nothing. I cannot delete any files – not Word docs, or PDF’s or HTM – nothing. I’ve Googled. Found this and tried this –
“From the Windows Desktop, click the Start button, and choose the “Control Panel” to open the Windows Control Panel.
From the Control Panel, choose the “Appearance and Personalization” Option and then choose the “Folder Options” option. This will open the “Folder Options” dialog.
On the Folder Options dialog, click on the “View” tab to select it.
From the View tab on the Folder Options dialog, make the following changes:

1. Check – “Always show icons, never thumbnails”

2. Uncheck – “Display file icon on thumbnails”

3. Uncheck – “Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items”

4. Uncheck – “Show preview handlers in preview pane”

Once all of these settings have been made, click the Ok button to apply the changes and close the dialog.
Finally, restart Windows so that the changes have been applied to Windows Explorer. Once Windows has restarted, try to delete your file, it should work!”

It did not work. In the past – when I had an issue with deleting and had my ext hdrive connected the steps above worked.
Again – win 7 pc – right click on a plain small word 2010 doc – or any file- and nothing happens.
Thank everyone in advance!
Rick

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You need to take ownership of the file before you can delete it.

Google will give the answer as well as searching here.

http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//147805-Can-t-delete-MS-FixIt?highlight=ownership

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Even more, you can Grant Administrative Rightsto all at once. This should also put Take Ownership in the Right Click context menu.

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I would first try running sfc /scannow. Open an elevated command prompt and run it from there.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Thank you everyone for your suggestions. But I think the issue is with my Seagat Replica external harddrive. It has a known issue of when it is connected to a computer and you do a right click on any icon it takes forever for the menu to appear. So I had taken to disconnecting it from my pc unless I wanted it to back up. I thought that solved the problem. When I came across this latest issue I thought it can’t be related as I have the Seagate drive USB cable disconnected.

While the suggestions made sounded good and might have worked it seemed like overkill just to delete a file from my pc – especially since I didn’t have any issues before and was suspicious of my Seagate.

So I uninstalled the Seagate software from my pc and rebooted (I had rebooted before uninstalling the software but having the Seagate disconnectd -but I still couldn’t delete). Then I could right click and delete like normal. I still don’t know how Seagate would prevent my deleting a file from my pc even when it was disconnected but it seemed to.

I had posted the previous problem to Seagate on Facebook after Googling and they had suggested uninstalling and reinstalling the Seagate software. But just disconnecting seemed to work so I didn’t at that time.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. I have this 2tb ext hdrive which may be useless.

Thanks again for your help.

R

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I also have the same problem

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I only plug my Seagate Ext HD in when I have to access it for creating or restoring an Image. I have seen instances where leaving a Ext HD plugged in during boot or shutdown causes problems. I also do not use the included Seagate S/W. In fact I formatted the Ext HD to NTFS and wiped out the Seagate S/W and did not install any Seagate S/W on my PC. Using any good third party Imaging S/W can access this Seagate Ext HD with no problems to do whatever you need to do.

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I always reformat any new drive to NTFS as I do not want the bloat software often included taking up my disk space have never had any problems with any make of drive doing this.

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sound to me that you have rootkit and worse malware or virus.
Try the following:
1. run rkill
2. run malwarebytes
3. run avast
4. run ccleaner
it mean you have to download these installers which are free.
These application are designed to remove viruses and malwares on your system and should be run in one after another.
It works to me so hope it works to your too.
Good luck.

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I’m the person who posted the original problem.

I also decided just to use the Seagate as a plain ext hdrive, meaning I uninstalled the Seagate software and just plug it in to my pc when I’m making a backup. It no longer does an automatic backup since I uninstalled the software that it loads. I may decide to use another piece of backup software to ‘run’ the Seagate but right now I’ll just do it manually.

This seems to be a know issue with Seagate – the fact that trying to right click takes forever or freezes Windows Explorer. I didn’t get any good info from Seagate facebook page except to uninstall and reinstall.

Thanks for all the suggestions and sorry if others are having the same issue with their seagate that i did.
R

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Ever since I downloaded the Long Path Tool referred to in post #10 a folder called Tmpdelete has appeared in the root of my C drive. If I send it to the recycle bin I have to use the Unlocker program to delete it. It then disappears from the recycle bin but immediately reappears in C. Can anyone tell me how to delete it permanently?

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If all else fails, boot with a Puppy Linux or Ubuntu CD. Either boots into a Linux environment without installing to the hard drive. I have successfully deleted files/folders using this method when unable to do in Windows.

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