Once in awhile, you need to do brain surgery on files locked by the system. This is a common problem run into by patches and hotfixes, so Windows has a special mechanism that lets it move files before any process has the chance to get its grubby little hands on it. This can only be done during a reboot, leading to the dire warning given to you by many installers.
The Win32 API that enables this is MoveFileEx. Calling this API with the MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT flag tells Windows to move (or delete) your file at the next boot.
Here’s how to do it from PowerShell:
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024 | function Move-LockedFile
{
param($path, $destination)
$path = (Resolve-Path $path).Path
$destination = $executionContext.SessionState.Path.GetUnresolvedProviderPathFromPSPath($destination)
$MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT = 0x00000004
$memberDefinition = @'
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true, CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
public static extern bool MoveFileEx(string lpExistingFileName, string lpNewFileName,
int dwFlags);
'@
$type = Add-Type -Name MoveFileUtils -MemberDefinition $memberDefinition -PassThru
$type::MoveFileEx($path, $destination, $MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT)
}
[C:\Windows\system32\config\txr]
PS:181 > dir -force | % { Move-LockedFile $_.Name (Join-Path c:\temp\txr ($_.Name + ".Bak")) }
[C:\Users\leeholm]
PS:182 > dir -Filter "NTUser.DAT{*" -force | % { Move-LockedFile $_.Name (Join-Path c:\temp\txr ($_.Name + ".Bak")) } |