This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
this is annoying
the files or folders in question are not open in another program, windows is just refusing to let them be moved or deleted due a recent action ie: photographs moved elsewhere etc
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
This may also be helpful:
Open Windows explorer.
Click ‘Organize -> Folder and search options’ (or ‘View -> Folder options’).
Select the ‘View’-tab.
In the ‘Advanced settings’ window, disable ‘Launch folder windows in a separate process’.
You may need to force restart all explorer instances (via task manager) or reboot your computer if the setting is not applied immediately.
Thank You - Thank You - Thank You !!! It works. My problem was renaming files. Now I can rename them and I do not get the constant " The action can't be completed because the folder etc"
But restarting requires you to kill all the programs that should be running in order to kill the program that shouldn't be running. Restarting works around this problem, in a manner most drastic. Restarting doesn't solve this problem.
Unix has the fuser command (written by Werner Almesberger in 1993) which identifies the process that is using the file so that you can kill that one process. Why does Windows still not have a similar command, even after these 20 years?
Muhammad Adeel Javaid you are frigging wonderful!! I can now delete files after I did what you said. Went into advanced settings and ticked "Launch folder in a separate process. Thank you, after hours of searching I found the solution in your answer.
that seems to work intermittently. I tried turning the preview pane on and off and if I close out and re open windows explorer and reopened it, It seemed to work intermittently.. at least I got to move a couple of folders.. hopefully, it will continue to work. thanks for that tip.
