Working Around “Access Denied”, “Sharing Violation”, and Spyware/Trojans

ecent spyware and trojans hide behind Windows’ own protection for open files, while many of the new antivirus, security, and even PC-cleanup programs that are supposed to fix those also leave behind processes and open files. All of those may cause repeated “Access Denied” and “Sharing Violation” errors.

Solving the errors used to involve juggling PID’s from the Windows Task Manager and repeated use of Microsoft’s kill.exe process. Even scripting the kill.exe process at boot or from Safe Mode is common. Here’s a list of utilities to automate the process and make manual cleanups a bit faster.

I’ve always liked SysInternals’ stable and well thought-out tools and here are two great utilities: the freeware Process Explorer and PS Kill. PS Kill adds support for scrubbing networked PCs to kill.exe, while Process Explorer tracks all tied processes, DLLs, and other open files. That makes Process Explorer useful - to find everything you actually want to close and delete. The good interface makes it good even when tossing out PS Kill and using any of the cleanup tools below.

One I like is the freeware MoveOnBoot. Just right-clicking on a file lets you choose to Copy/Move/Delete a file on the PCs next boot. It’s also recommended in “How To Override “Access Denied” and “Sharing Violation” Roadblocks”, along with Unlocker Gotcha. Unlocker Gotacha is also freeware and their interface looks pretty fast. They’ve added a bit of Process Explorer’s functionality, so you just need to right-click a folder and a list of all open/locked files will pop up.

Also take a look at EMCO’s Unlock IT. Instead of adding files to a list and rebooting, Unlock IT integrates the ability to kill processes within the interface and copy, move, or delete related files immediately. Instant gratification is great - and even better when it means not needing to wait through a boot process slowed by too many viruses and trojans. (credits:mr.tweak.com)