Unable to delete files and such. Problems with privilages?

So, lately my Win7 started acting weird. I'm not able to delete or rename files that I have used recently. Let's say I run File.exe, close it and I want to delete/rename this file. Sometimes I'm trying to do that I get error about something that couldn't delete file because it's in use. It also happens with auto patchers in games, system denies to delete/modify items. Happens with compiler aswell, they're not able to over-write output file. I'm not going to post screenshot since it doesn't happen always and I don't really know how to reproduce this, but it's regular error box with message similar to "Couldn't delete file. File is in use/opened by some process." or something like that with 2 buttons "Retry" and "Cancel". Current solution for that is Log off/Reboot or use application called "UnLocker" (I found it via Google some time ago), but you all know it's not correct solution and it should be solved in some other way. So, here I'm asking - What would you do in my case? How would you fix that?

I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit, running at Intel's Celeron E3330 with 2x 2048 MB Ram and some ATI's Graphic Card. I don't think that hardware really matters in this case, but if any of you will need this info - I'll post more detailed description.

Regards, Diath.

Likely a stupid question, but have you checked your task manager to verify an instance of the "File.exe" or whatever program or patcher is not running when you try to rename or delete it? That's the most common scenario I can think of, beyond rights issues.

Yeah of course I've checked that but no, files don't appear anymore in process list.

whs said:

If they are in use, Unlocker is the right answer. That will detach the handles. Apparently the system does not release them correctly. That happens to me often with external disks. Never figured out why.

I've figured it out myself that handles might not be fried and that's why I'm using UnLocker, but still I'm wondering how to get rid of this problem so I can use regular "Delete" again, it's kinda annoying to use UnLocker.

* BUMP *
Still wanna know how to fix this issue.

Diath said:

whs said:

If they are in use, Unlocker is the right answer. That will detach the handles. Apparently the system does not release them correctly. That happens to me often with external disks. Never figured out why.

I've figured it out myself that handles might not be fried and that's why I'm using UnLocker, but still I'm wondering how to get rid of this problem so I can use regular "Delete" again, it's kinda annoying to use UnLocker.

If you ever find a solution please post here. I'm having this problem too but ONLY with MKV files. Unfortunately Unlocker and Lock hunter don't usually fix the problem (not even on reboot). On serveral occasions I've actually had to copy off all other content, format the drive and copy the content back. On Drives with 2TB of data this is becoming a major pain.

I noticed that both applications say that explorer.exe is what is locking the file, and as many as 20 instances of explorer have always got a lock on the file.

I did a clean install of Win 7 and updated to SP1 but that didn't help.

cheers