User:Mjb/Windows folders that can't be renamed or deleted

Generally, if a Windows folder can't be renamed or deleted, something is holding open the folder or something in it.

Here's one reason that really irritates people:

Thumbs.db generation
Windows generates hidden Thumbs.db files in folders with thumbnail-able content. As of Windows 7 (maybe Vista, too), the OS doesn't actually need them; the files are only for compatibility with older Windows OSes and apps that make use of the files.

In Windows Vista and Windows 7, there's some kind of Explorer bug which sometimes holds these Thumbs.db files open, preventing renaming or deletion of their parent folder. It seems to mostly affect video files.

One workaround is this:
 * Temporarily change the folder view to one of the following: content, medium icons, large icons, extra-large icons. I don't know if this really works every time, though.

Another workaround which works 100% for me is to disable Thumbs.db generation with a group policy update. There are various instructions around for doing this, but this is the simplest (do it as an Administrator, and remember you have to do Run as Administrator when opening the command shell):

You can then check the status of the key:

After disabling Thumbs.db generation, you might want to just go ahead and delete all your existing Thumbs.db files (do it from the root of each drive):

Here are a couple of discussion threads related to this:
 * http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/c0817162-3fcd-4823-bdf8-70b2936cd51b#5f1ebc10-dd44-400e-a356-d585d7a6c851
 * http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/ca2cbc1a-362f-4f01-a8f8-6f05112f1915/

One of the posts mentions the possibility that it has something to do with SMB2 Client Redirector cache, but no one seems to have checked into this:
 * http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff686200(WS.10).aspx