William, > I have a file on my desktop that won't go away. > It doesn't have an extension, it is zero bytes in size, and zero bytes on > the disk. > > When I try to delete it, I get an error message "Cannot delete file: Cannot > read from the source file or disk". > If I try to change attributes, or copy it, I get an error: "The system > cannot find the specified file".
there's a possibility that some system process has locked the file. In that case you need to find its' handle, close it, and then you can do pretty much everything with it, icluding delete. To find a file handle just download a copy of excellent freeware tool ProcessExplorer from http://tinyurl.com/sjzno then press Ctrl-F and enter part of the file name. You get a window showing which process has locked the file. You can then unlock it choosing "Close Handle" from the menu. You will be warned that it's potentially dangerous operation which can lead to system instability and indeed it can. :-) However it's still probably a better solution than complete reinstall. Cheers, Peter -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net