Today I am running a special! Two whole tips for the price of one 😉 I decided to lump these together because these two apps are used from Windows Explorer right-click menu.
The first one is LockHunter. The only reason we need this app is because Windows Explorer is not giving us any more information on what is locking a file when you try to delete it. I see the following very often:
Screenshot of a Windows Explorer error saying a file is open.
Thanks for that error, Windows, but could you be more helpful please? As it turns out, yes it can.. but it won't!
In comes LockHunter, which will tell you exactly what processes are locking the selected file or folder and giving you helpful options to unlock or delete, just what I needed!
Screenshot of the Windows right-click context menu showing the option to choose "What's locking this folder?".
Screenshot of LockHunter showing that 4 running processes are preventing the selected directory from being deleted. There are options to unlock or delete the folder.
Another option that can be seen in the right-click context menu above, almost at the top, is TreeSize Free. It is solving another Windows Explorer frustration: finding out what is using all of your disk space.
TreeSize is a great way to go figure out what to start cleaning up when you're starting to run low on disk space. I use this often, only to find out that: "oh, yes, of course I unzipped that complete ISO file to find a single file in it and then forgot to delete it" 😅
Screenshot of TreeSize showing that the C:\Users\Sebastiaan folder is using the most space on my C drive.
By default the results in TreeSize are sorted by the largest directory and when you open that directory up you can dig in deeper to find what directory inside of that one is using the most space and so on and so on.Â
And now, when you are deleting all of those large directories, and they're locked.. you know exactly what to do.
