A PDF was stuck in Windows and I couldn’t delete it: this is how I managed to delete it

The first thing is to know what is happening or the reason why the problem occurs. This error has a name and it is “Buffer overflow” or buffer overflow. Specifically, the problem appears when a program does not correctly control the amount of data that is copied to a reserved memory area.

When the amount of data is greater than the amount reallocated, the excess bytes are copied to contiguous memory areas. The original content is overwritten and this generates a failure. This usually occurs in Windows, above all, because of the file name.

Maybe you think or have tried to restart the computer, but there is no way to delete that annoying file that you no longer want. There are a couple of quite interesting methods that allow us to delete files that are generating a buffer overflow.

Rename file by CMD

The problem probably comes because the file name exceeds the character size established in Windows. The “File Explorer” establishes a maximum buffer of 260 characters which, if exceeded, generates “Buffer overflow”. Normally, this is usually due to a very long title or one with many special characters. We will have to rename the file and to do this you must follow these steps:

1. We write “Command Prompt” in the search engine and now click on it, there is no need to run it as Administrator.
2. We must access the folder using commands. If the file is inside our user folder, we must simply write “CD folder_name” replacing the “folder_name” with the name of the folder that contains the file. If it is somewhere else, we must write “CD” and the full path to the folder that contains the file.
3. Once we are there, we must now use the “ren” command which refers to “rename”. We will write: ren «file_name.extension» «new_file_name.extension». You must write in “file_name.extension” the name of the file and the extension, which can be PDF, JPG or any other. We can find this out by right clicking on the file and entering properties. Next, in “new_file_name.extension” we will write the new name of the file with the same extension
4. We hit Enter and the problem should now be solved.

After carrying out this process, we will go to the folder that contains the file and we will see that the name change has been carried out. Now we should be able to delete the file without problems. If this is not possible, you must go to the next process that we are going to detail.

Unlocker Software 1.9.2

We are going to need a specific tool that allows us to delete any type of file that remains. The fastest and easiest software is Unlocker 1.9.2 which you can download directly from here. Additionally, you will need WinRAR, since the archive has a password. You must follow these steps:

1. Download the WinRAR program from here and install it.
2. Now download Unlocker 1.9.2 and extract it (password is: 123456).
3. You have to install this program, which is very lightweight and installs in no time.
4. We proceed to open it. A window appears in which we will search for the folder and file that are causing problems.
5. Once located and selected, we click to accept.
6. We choose the “Delete” option from the drop-down menu and click “Accept”.

You can choose to try renaming the file again to see if you can delete it later. As you can see, this software is quite easy to use and can handle any type of file.