Win XP goes crazy when dealing with incomplete .avi files.

[thagen]

Is there any solution to this? I can't rename them, delete them or move them, says it is in use, when i don't have any programs up that could be using it. It's really bugging me.

[Cloud Strife]

Try going into safe mode and delete the .AVI file:

(Press F8 several times after the POST screen when you restart your computer, then select safe mode)

or you can try doing it through MS-DOS:

(Insert an empty floppy disk, goto format, and select MS-DOS boot disk, restart your computer while the disk is in the floppy drive, and wait till it gets into MS-DOS prompt, all you need to do from here is find the file, and delete it)

Or try going into command prompt (Start, Programs, Accessories, Command Prompt) and type into the command prompt window:

CHKDSK /F

Agree with all the questions, and restart your computer, this should check your entire disk for any errors and try to fix them, thus it will take a long time (1 hour+), but once it has finished it, try deleting it.

If these don't work, try going into command prompt via windows start menu, and remove all the attributes to the file, for example, if the file's called movie.avi, then you type:

ATTRIB MOVIE.AVI -S -H -R

Then try to delete the file.

If none of these work, then I suggest a complete format of your drive, because I may of had the same problem as you; if you have overclocked your CPU/FSB, windows can sometimes cause errors when writing files, and could come up with the problem that you're having.

Good-luck killin' that evil .AVI file! :thumb:

[Mr. C]

Perhaps the preview function in XP is choking on the incomplete file.

If this is the case, I have 2 possible fixes.
1.) disable the preview function.
or
2.) use DivFix to rebuild the index for the video - that should make it viewable as well as prevent the XP preview function from hanging.

http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divfix.html

Note: be sure to strip the index before you resume downloading to the file again.

[thagen]

Thanks for the help guys. I was hoping to find something to prevent XP from doing this though, but i guess there isn't much i can do.

It's not the preview function cause it's off, and i've used divfix to delete the files. Sometimes it helps to simply reboot, then i can rename, move and everything, but sometimes XP won't let me do anything to it.

I've had this problem on every Win XP install i've had, on different comps, so i'm pretty sure XP just can't handle incomplete .avi files for some reason. It's the only thing that's bugging me about XP really, other than that i'm quite happy with it.

It's not like it's a big problem though, and it hardly ever becomes an issue, i'd just like to find out what's causing it. :)