Biff mentioned she had this problem and I never got around to telling her the solution, so here goes ...

She has files on her desktop that she cannot delete for whatever strange reason. This should do the trick:

Open Terminal (Applications->Utilities) ... you should get a command prompt window.

Type "rm " (that's rm space ... r-m, and then the spacebar

Drag the file into the window and it should automatically put the filename after the space.

Hit Return, and it should remove the file. It may take a few seconds for it to actually disappear from the desktop.

Good luck!

BigJohn

i will give it a try.

YaY! it worked!!!

thank you BigJohn!!!

i'm so glad i created this forum. now everything will be here when i need to know it again.

woohoo!!!

yay! I can't believe it's taken me so long to get that to you ... I'm glad it worked.



BigJohn

me too!

i already got rid of 3 of em, but now i found another one & i gotta go back & figure out what to do again.

see? i told you it's a good thing this will always be here.

For getting rid of stubborn files on a PC, such as when you get an error message like "This file is in use. Close the program that's using it." or some such silly nonsense ...

First, try booting in Windows Safe Mode. In XP, I think you do that by hitting F8 when you are rebooting. If that doesn't work, there's a free program called Unlocker that nicely integrates with Windows Explorer to provide right-click functionality.

If you use Windows Media Player's "Monitor Folder" feature, that can lock a folder that contains files you want to delete. Turn that feature off, close Media Player and try again.

There's a few things to try...

BigJohn

my kids were real impressed with the tidyness of our desktop after i got rid of all those stoopid files i had dragged down into the corners.

RIGHT ON! I get those too! I think I would always just start opening and closing stuff and clicking around and then when i finally had enough I would just drag and drop it onto my system folder so that I wouldn't have to look at it but...it was still there...cluttering up my system. Thanks BIG JOHN!!!!
I will never have to hide my junk in the closet again!!!!!!!!

i always dragged mine off the edge of the screen into the corner, so only a teensy bit of it showed. i am delighted that they're gone now, cuz if i ever had to restart or something, they'd come back out.