How to : Delete an Undeletable or Locked File

Have you ever run into a situation where you wanted to delete a file, but Windows simply wouldn’t allow you to do it? Personally, these things happen to me all the time, especially when I’m at a client’s house trying to get their machine clean of malware. Have you ever tried deleting a locked file using common windows commands? If so, then you’ll know that this is just not possible.

The main reason behind this is that the explorer.exe process locks files that are in use, effectively preventing you from deleting them. Usually, these files should not be touched, but sometimes, situations arise when you really need to erase some troublesome ones.

Fortunately, there are a few easy solutions to delete those files.


Solution #1: Kill explorer.exe


  1. Open a command prompt
  2. Navigate to the location where the locked file is
  3. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL, click on “task manager”, select the Processes tab
  4. Kill the explorer.exe process via the “End Process” button
  5. Go back to the command prompt and delete the file
  6. Bring up the task manager windows again
  7. Select file->new task
  8. Type explorer.exe in the “create new task” field
  9. Press OK.


Solution #2: Use The Windows Recovery Console

Just stick your Windows CD in your CD tray, boot on it, and at the “Welcome to Setup” screen, press “R“. Once the recovery console has started, navigate to the location of your locked file, and delete it. Since WRC does not really start the system, the files will not be in use, and you will be able to delete them. Oh, and for all you Linux geeks out there, yes, we know, doing this via a linux live CD / USB key is also possible.



Solution #3: Use unlocker


Unlocker is a very useful freeware that will allow you to unlock any files that are currently in use by Windows. You’ll know if this is happening if you are getting any of these messages when trying to delete a file:

  • Cannot delete file: Access is denied
  • There has been a sharing violation
  • The source or destination file may be in use
  • The file is in use by another program or user
  • Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use

Unlocker will make things right again for you.

You’ll notice that right after installing the software, a new option named “unlocker” will appear when right clicking any files or folders in Windows Explorer. To unlock a locked file, just right click it, select unlocker, and the unlocker software will start. Then, click “unlock all” and close the software. Now that your file is unlocked, just delete it in Windows Explorer, as you always do. This is much simpler than solution #1 or #2, isn’t it?

I hope these three solutions will help you get rid of those hard to delete files!


Custom Domain Setup on Blogger with Godaddy

Custom domain setup in Blogger.com is used to create your own blog URL. (for example: techproceed.blogspot.com to techproceed.com).

When you purchase a domain from Godaddy.com, they assign an IP address (A record and CNAME record) for the domain. Hence, you need to change those records to point to your Blogger.com blog. This post can help you to change the A and CNAME records of your Godaddy account.

Follow the steps given below:

Login to your Godaddy account and click on the My Account tab.



Under Domains, you will see the list of your domain names. Click on Advance Details of your desired domain. You’ll be directed to the Domain Manager page.



At the bottom of the Domain Manager Page, you will see a section under the heading DNS Manager, where you can edit the DNS configuration of your domain by clicking the Launch link



Under the A(Host) Tab of the DNS manager, enter the 4 IP addresses as below, one-by-one, using the Quick add button, to change the A records.


216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21



Click on the Quick Add button in the box labeled CNAME(alias). If you’ve already created a CNAME record for your blog’s address, click the pencil icon next to the existing CNAME record.

After you are done adding records, click on Save Changes to save your edited data.

For the Name, enter only the sub-domain of the address you want to use for your blog. For example, if you picked www.myblog.com as your address, enter www here.

Enter ghs.google.com as the Host Name. Specify a TTL or use the default setting of 1 hour.



This is how you can change the existing domain IP address that now points to your Blogger IP address. Wait for few hours for the changes to take effect in your IP records. After that you can say bye bye to your old Blogger.com blog URL by changing it with your custom domain name.

FAQs :

Q 1. Domain without www not working, but with www is working

Solution 1 (works for sure) :

You will have to redo it via Google Apps.You will have to enable a redirect.

1. Go to Google Apps and sign in to domain management.

2. Then click on domain settings.

3. Then click on domain Names.

4. Then Click on words highlighted to set a redirect via google apps and you should see it done within 3 hours or MAX 2 DAYS (though it usually does not take more than a day in the rarest case).Just follow the simple english instructions there and you should see it done.

Solution 2 :

Ping the website you are wanting to forward to, in order to get the IP address if you don't know it.

"Run"; CMD; "ping yourwebsite.com"

Will display ping data and reply from IP address. Note this address.


  1. Login to Godaddy.com to manage your account or other domain registry site
  2. Go to DNS Control
  3. Modify/Add "A Host"
  4. Under "Host" enter: @
  5. Under "Points To" Enter the IP Address you obtained earlier.
  6. You are done! Site is forwarded without the www prefix when entered into address bar.


Solution 3 :

A website can have any valid fully qualified domain name. If you own the domain Techproceed.com, nothing at all prevents you from running a website called superchickens.Techproceed.com.

In practice, though, users expect two things, and if you don't provide them users will be frustrated and not find your site:

1. If your domain is Techproceed.com, then your website needs to respond when a user types just Techproceed.com in the address bar and presses Enter, because that is convenient.

2. Your website should also respond with the same content when a user types www.Techproceed.com, because the www. prefix is very common and many users will assume they must provide it.

So how do we do this? If you are paying for service from a web hosting company, and www.Techproceed.com works but Techproceed.com doesn't, then your hosting company needs to fix that for you right away. Contact technical support and let them know you will be switching hosting companies if they don't fix it promptly. There is no valid reason why they can't make both names work for you. It is a very simple change to the web server's configuration and they ought to be doing it automatically for every new customer anyway.

That's the answer for nearly everyone reading this. However, if you are running the web server yourself -- possibly because you run a web hosting company -- here are the steps you need to follow to do the job:

1. Adjust the DNS settings for Techproceed.com. Make sure you have address records (type A records) for both Techproceed.com and www.Techproceed.com, with the same IP address. This is not hard to do at all with both Windows and Linux DNS servers.

2. If you are using virtual hosting to provide many websites on a single IP address, you will also need to tell your web server about the alternative name for the site. In your web server's configuration, add Techproceed.com as an alias for www.Techproceed.com. In an Apache server httpd.conf file, this typically looks like:

DocumentRoot /home/www/web
ServerName www.Techproceed.com
ServerAlias Techproceed.com

Only the ServerAlias directive is new. the rest is shown to provide context. Your Apache VirtualHost configuration may not be identical.

After the configuration file is edited the Apache web server must be signaled to reload its configuration. On a typical Unix system this can be done with the following command:

service httpd reload


If you have any queries/feedback, please write it in comments section below OR mail me here : Snehal [at] Techproceed [dot] com

Happy Setting up of your own custom domain  :-)