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Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: Mattias on April 23, 2004, 07:40:50 AM

Title: Cannot remove file, used by a program
Post by: Mattias on April 23, 2004, 07:40:50 AM

Hi!

When i run a virus scan and find a virus, sometimes it can't be removed because a program or process is using the infected file. How do I find out what process is using it so I can kill it and remove the file? I noticed that the is a box that you can check for the program(Avast) to remove the file on system startup but I want to remove it ASAP.

Best Regards
Mattias

Title: Re:Cannot remove file, used by a program
Post by: igor on April 23, 2004, 09:28:24 AM

Well, you may try things like Process Explorer from SysInternals, but in general, it may not be possible to remove it without restart. The file may be a DLL loaded into all the processes... so you would have to kill all the processes, which you simply can't do.