Everyone has experienced a situation when you try to delete a file, but it just won’t delete – popping up various error messages like – “the file is in use by another program”, “cannot delete file : access denied” and so on. This is mainly because the file is currently opened by some program and is now locked. It cannot be deleted without first unlocking it. This can also be done by some malware programs that do not want you to delete some malicious files. In any case, you can use free LockHunter to unlock such files and delete them.
LockHunter is a free tool to delete files blocked by something you have no idea about. This makes LockHunter a useful tool for fighting against malware, and other programs that are blocking files without a reason. Unlike other similar tools it deletes files into the recycle bin so you may restore them if deleted by mistake. Here are some of the key features of LockHunter :
- Shows processes locking a file or folder
- Allows to unlock, delete, copy or rename a locked file
- Allows to kill locking process
- Allows to remove locking processes from hard drive
- Can unload DLLs from processes
- Integrates in to Explorer menu
- It deletes files into the recycle bin, so you may restore them if deleted by mistake
- Supports both 32 and 64bit Windows .
You can download LockHunter tool from its website. Download is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. It supports all versions of Windows starting from Windows 2000. The download is around 1.5 megabytes only and is a setup installer. After LockHunter is installed on your system you can either launch it from its Start Menu shortcut, or you can just right-click on any locked file and choose What is locking this file? as shown in the picture below :
This would pop-up a UAC dialog asking you to give administrator level permissions to LockHunter. This is necessary as LockHunter cannot unlock files without being elevated itself. After you have given proper permissions to LockHunter, it would show a window listing all the processes and other items that are currently locking the selected file as shown in the picture below :
At this point, you can choose to delete the file by clicking on the Delete It! button, simple unlock the file by clicking on the Unlock It! button or you can click on the Other button to select other options like – Unlock & Rename, Unlock & Copy, Close Locking Processes, Delete Locking Process from Disk etc.
LockHunter is a free file unlocker and can help you in those difficult situations when a stubborn file just refuses to delete. It does not delete the locked files completely but sends them to the Recycle Bin, so you can recover them later if needed. You can download it from http://lockhunter.com/.