Thread: Can't delete video files

Have quite a lot of music and video files on my computer and most of the time these work fine without a problem. Occasionally, though, I want to delete one of them and that's when I sometimes have a problem. I select the file and press Delete on the keyboard but, after confirming that I want to delete it, I see a message that tells me the file is in use and can't be deleted. I always make sure that it is not in use, though, so I'm confused as to what's causing the problem. It still occurs even if! right-click the file and select Delete. The funny thing is that if! come back to it later, I can usually delete it without any trouble.

This problem occurs with large files, of which video files are usually the most
common kind. What's happening is that when you click on the file Windows reads it to find out what it is, and also to allow it to generate a preview and allow you to find more information about it. The problem is that this process takes a little while and if you try to delete the file while Windows is still reading it and thinking about it the process will fail because Windows will think the file is in use (which, in effect, it is). The solution, as you have already deduced, is to leave it for a while. In most cases, unless it's a really big video file, a few seconds is all it should need to finish reading what it needs from the file and you can then delete it.