Posts Tagged ‘desktop icons’

Cannot Delete file on Desktop on Windows XP – The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

Wednesday, August 13th, 2014

delete-locked-file-in-windows-xp-7-cannot-delete-file-on-desktop-windows-xp-file-used-by-another-process-solution-fix
I had to fix recently another Windows XP infected with plenty of malicious malware. I've used tips from http://malwaretips.com/blogs/ and launch all suggested tools to cleanup the PC. Some few thousands of infections were cleaned and the PC started working much better than earlier, however still there was one weird issue on the Windows XP desktop there was an .exe file hanging with 0 bytes size and whenever I tried to delete the file either from GUI or command line with (del command) it refused to delete with error:
 

The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.


Well the message clearly shows, the file can't be deleted because some program was using it however I couldn't see any program that has locked the .exe file. I've checked that in (Windows Task Manager) run from

Start -> Run:

taskmgr


I've done a quick search online to see, whether someone has fixed the issues, and saw many threads talking about the issue suggesting that the issue got solved Windows XP OS re-install, as this was not an option for me because the PC's reinstall would be at least a 2 day time work, plus it contains some programs which will probably be hard to freshly install, because they're no longed supported.

Finally I've seen in this thread suggestion to try to kill Windows Explorer after you have opened windows with windows cmd.exe because this will prevent the .exe file being locked by Windows Explorer and will allow it to be deleted with del command. This actually worked. I've launched

Start -> Run

taskmgr

windows-kill-explorer-process-to-delete-explorer-locked-file-on-windows-xp-desktop

and

cmd.exe

Found explorer.exe process and killed it, this makes the whole desktop (icons, start menu etc. disappear) – as Windows Explorer is main managing Windows app. Then using Alt+Tab to switch to Command Prompt window deleted it with:
 

del  Process_that_cannot_be_killed.exe


And finally succesfully deleted it 🙂

Linux Mint 14 – “Nadia”: how to Display Trash icon on Desktop

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

Recently Linux Mint is taking lead among preferred Linux distributions. From my little experience with it mainly installing it on friends PCs I should say Mint develops done a great job to make it more graphically convenient for users migrating from Windows OS.

Though it is generally intuitive, there is one little thing that might be useful for novice Mint user – where from to make Trash icon.

There are two ways to do it.

1. Is by installing / launching gnome-tweak-tool

Linux Mint 12 desktop trashbin screenshot

I personally prefer gnome-tweak-tool, cause it has plenty of nice options related to how GUI environment, behaves. I believe even non Linux-Mint GNOME 3 users should take a look at gnome-tweak-tool if already haven't as it allows user to tailer plenty of desktop nice stuff.

2. Through [Main Menu]

-> Preferences -> Desktop Settings -> Desktop -> Desktop icons

Linux Mint desktop how to visualize trash bin on desktop screenshot

How to make GNOME 3 Desktop icons to work as in GNOME 2 on Debian GNU / Linux

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

If you're using Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid, you have already figured out GNOME3 settings to start GNOME in Classic mode (like in GNOME 2), starts gnome in a mode where the desktop is not showing the usual Computer, Home, Trash etc.

Besides that in that strange back-compitability Classic GNOME mode its impossible to add any program as a link in desktop like in the good old GNOME 2.

Thanksfully this abusive behaviour of the backwards compitability mode is easily fixable by two simple steps, here they are:

1. Install gnome-tweak-tool – (Tool to adjust advanced configuration settings for GNOME

root@debian:~# apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

2. Start gnome-tweak tool

Press ALT+F2 and run gnome-tweak-tool or run it via xterm / gnome-terminal:

moonman@Moon:~$ gnome-tweak-tool

Change in Desktop, Have file manager handle the desktop the settings to ON

gnome-tweek-tool Debian GNU Linux wheezy sid screenshot

gnome-tweak-tool Debian wheezy/Sid GNU Linux screenshot handle desktop on

Once the Screenshot Handle Desktop is set to ON, further drag and dropping any application to the Desktop will be working.
Something really irritating is that launching applications in GNOME 3 does not work properly if you just press ALT+F2 and type in lets say gnome-terminal , to work around this weirdity you will have to install gnome-shell package.