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Forgive the riddle-like question, but that's what I'm experiencing (I think). What I'm trying to do is delete a specific file. When I originally tried to delete it, Explorer tells me it's in use by System. What I did was to deny Full Control to NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM (the "user" under which the process "System" was running, as told by Process Explorer) on the file, and restart the machine.

After restarting, I go to delete the file and get a File In Use dialogue saying "The action can't be completed because the file is open in another program". I return to the ever useful Process Explorer to search for that file name (my default method for finding what process has locked a file) but when searching for Handle or DLL substring, Process Explorer returns 0 results, as if the file is not in use by any process at all. I'm running Process Explorer as Administrator by the way. I was even able to rename the file and restart again, but still cannot delete it.

Can anyone elighten me as to how this happens? How can I find out what process is holding on to that file, so I can kill it and delete the damned thing?

Edit: Run5k suggested this a duplicate of this question, and although it provides a solution to my specific problem, I would like an answer explaining why I can't find out what process is using the file I wish to delete.

Dusty Vargas
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  • Note, it really is an exercise in futility trying to lock the system account out of anything. – Frank Thomas Nov 22 '17 at 19:51
  • @FrankThomas What makes you say that? Does the system account somehow circumvent traditional NTFS permissions? thanks for the link Run5k, that does seem to be a method to do what I need to do (and is my exact situation as well) but I would still like a good answer to the theoretical part of my question – Dusty Vargas Nov 22 '17 at 19:59
  • Hi @OilyBusiness, Welcome to SuperUser. We're here to provide answers to questions, not speculate why something is not working. This question will therefor be closed as being a duplicate at some point, because otherwise this question is simply speculating which is considered Off-Topic. See the helpcenter for more information – LPChip Nov 22 '17 at 20:14
  • I'd argue that this is not asking for speculation, because I've experienced this many times, under different Windows builds, on different machines. I believe this is intended behavior for Windows in certain situations. I think this has something to do with the way Windows works and that the information is likely available somewhere, and I hope that someone with that knowledge could answer this question. – Dusty Vargas Nov 22 '17 at 20:21
  • I would also like to note that I've searched for duplicates and have not found anything that answers my question. – Dusty Vargas Nov 22 '17 at 20:22
  • @OilyBusiness, there are too many possible reasons why you can't find something. One reason could be that you suck at finding stuff. :-) Only kidding. But people need to be able to replicate your particular situation and we can't do that from the information in the question. – fixer1234 Nov 25 '17 at 06:28
  • Thanks for your comment, I do understand your point of replicating the problem. Next time I will be more direct with my question rather than including my entire scenario, because this simply is not a duplicate but I understand that by including my scenario, it seems that way. The other question is asking how to delete locked files and I'm really asking a question about the nature of locked files in Windows, sometimes locked files just do not show as locked and there must be something I'm missing there. No matter, off to another forum! Thank you all for your input. – Dusty Vargas Nov 27 '17 at 17:11

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