How to get rid of “Locked AVI” Bug in Windows XP
When we try to delete, move or rename an AVI file (a movie, a video clip, etc.), Windows XP often answers “Cannot delete xyz: Access is Denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use”.
This is because of a feature of the OS, that reads AVI informations (lenght, codec, resolution…) as soon as we select it with the mouse, or when we simply “hover” its icon with the pointer. Same informations are then available in the AVI properties page.
We can disable this function from the Windows System Registry:
Click on “Start” > “Run…”, type REGEDIT and press enter;
Browse the registry following this path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}\InProcServer32
Delete the entire “InProcServer32” key (displayed as a folder)
You’ve done! Now (it can be necessary a reboot) Windows has stopped reading AVI details, and you can move, rename or delete AVI without problems.
Consider that now your system doesn’t give you any info about AVI files: if you need this, I suggest to install an additional free tool: Gspot, that will give you a lot of useful details about your movie clip files.
April 29th, 2006
MoveOnBoot is a lot better, get it here and it is also free…
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Boot-Manager-Disk/MoveOnBoot.shtml
May 6th, 2006
No Software required
Just give another avi the same exact name as you the one you want to delete then place it in the same location, click yes for replace and then delete it. Works every time.
September 4th, 2006
i always met this kind of problem, and thanks for your advice!
February 10th, 2007
Thank you!! I have been fighting with this problem for weeks. It took 10 seconds to fix it with your advice.
May 14th, 2007
avg free
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July 22nd, 2007
finally gone for good, why use a software fix or rename files when this gets rid of it forever!!!
January 20th, 2008
Heaven sent. I though it was already a virus. I followed it and it works. I now deleted the avi file affected. thanks.
March 14th, 2009
i have no clsid
March 30th, 2009
Awesome, it worked great. I thought it might be a problem with the SIZE of the avi files, but it still locked up with a 37 meg avi. To the user who said ‘I have no clsid’ I didn’t find it to begin with either, but I was looking at the top of the very long list, where all the items begin with a . period. Look past those items, I found mine there.