Cannot Delete File: The file is in use by another program or user

Arrrgh!!! Microsoft has to be the yearly winner for the “Most Stupid Error Message” award for displaying the most excruciatingly annoying error messages in any of their products. The main reason for their annoyance is because majority of the error messages tells you something is wrong, but not the source of the error. A good example of this is: “Cannot delete file. This file is in use by another program or user”.

I am not expecting the error message to tell me the exact cause of the error but at least some meaningful information on what could be the issue. Anyway, back to the error at hand…

I found a really great bit of free software that fixes the problem. Its called Unlocker and you can download it here. It allows you to see exactly what processes are currently using the file you are trying to delete, edit or move. What’s even better is that Unlocker can kill the processes within its UI.