The last unmovable file appears to be: \pagefile.sys

Question

I'm trying to shrink my main hard drive to add another partition to my computer. I've completely turned off virtual memory, and Process Explorer by SysInternals states that nothing has that handle open. I've run fsutil volume querycluster \\?\Volume{2448eacd-e9f4-11de-be2a-806e6f6e6963} 0x2187c93 and wound up with Cluster 0x0000000002187c93 used by P---D \pagefile.sys::$DATA. I'm at a loss here, and am hoping for some guidance.

Is it possible that some startup scripts are getting in the way?

Answer 1

You could move the page file to another drive or if you have no other drives that you can use delete the file from another OS and see if it comes back, if it is disable it shouldn't.

Use the install disk if you have one and use the Shift+F10 to get to CLI or use a Linux OS to delete the file. There are a few ways you could do this but from another OS the file will not be locked at all.

Answer 2

If you have already disabled virtual memory, try to delete pagefile.sys at next boot using movefile, another SysInternals utility.

Answer 3

I'm not 100% sure how it happened, but after rebooting and logging in with another account (different domain) I was able to get past this immovable file.