How to delete a file that is using by windows?

Is there any 开发者_运维百科way to delete a file when its using by any program or other process in windows? I searched and found this 2 ways:

1- using RunOnce key in Registry; I'm not gonna use this because i dont want to wait for windows restart or anything else... prefer to do it ontime!

2- using the way declared in this page: http://www.delphipages.com/forum/showthread.php?t=201190 the problem here is its useful under NT windows, i need a way works on all Windowses!

Thank you.

the problem here is its useful under NT windows, i need a way works on all Windowses!

All modern desktop Windowses (XP, Vista, 7) are also NT. Do you really need to work with NT<4 or Win98? Or even Win CE/Mobile/Phone? Probably not.

If you need to delete an open file straight away, about the only thing you can do is attach to each process using debugger privileges, see if it has any handles open on the file, and if so close them underneath it. You can do this the manual way using eg Process Explorer. Many applications won't react well to having their files closed on them; expect them to exception out when they try to do something with the dead handle.

Unfortunately there is no option in Windows to have Unix-style files that can exist attached to a file handle independently of being stored under a filename on disc.

You cant delete a file when someone is using it. No matter how hard you try, windows will not let you. It can work with some files, but in general it does not work. What you can try is postpone the deletion, when no one is using the file. You can:

1 - use RunOnce, but you dont want that.
2 - Wait in a loop, trying to delete the file. Pseudo code:

DeleteFile  
Check if you was able to delete or if file still exists.  
if you are able to delete, then exit loop.  

That is the best you can do, and what i could remeber.

Try MoveFileEx with MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT flag. Will postpone move or delete action until reboot.

Edit: If you don't whant to restart the only option is to close those handles. ProcessExplorer does that and works all the time and I have not seen any process to crash. See more info about enumeration handles in a process at http://www.codeguru.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-176997.html. But keep in mint that you should enumerate all processes in the system and behave different on Vista+ (you need to be elevated)

Your files are most likely locked because some process has a handle open to them. That is the most common reason for the Access denied result when deleting or moving a file.

A really blunt way is to close that handle.

Then Handles tool from SysInternals (you can download the sources too) can do that for you: I have been successfully using that.

Note 1: You need administrative privileges to use it.

Note 2: Closing a handle from another process is considered very rude, and can make that process unstable.