[Solved] Serious trouble deleting downloaded file

[Pretentious Goblin]

I downloaded a .mp4 off of this post and now there's absolutely nothing I can do to get rid of it or interact with it in any way. Right-clicking on it just hangs the folder. Delete key does nothing. Cut-paste results in an endless "calculating". File shredders lock up. Attempting to empty the Downloads folder using Windows Storage never finishes. I'd think I've run into some nasty piece of malware, but my antivirus gives it a pass. Oh, and Firefox attempts to redownload it with a permanent "Unknown time left" and no network usage (and I cannot cancel it). Any idea what's going on?

 

[LightmanP]

Did you try restarting the pc/firefox? It's basic but could help. And by file shredders, I assume you've tried those programs that unlock/delete files?

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Did you try restarting the pc/firefox? It's basic but could help. And by file shredders, I assume you've tried those programs that unlock/delete files?

Yes, I have, no difference. And yeah, I those programs afaik are meant to delete files and make them unrecoverable.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

And now I've also tried /sfc scannow in the command prompt, which apparently found and fixed corrupted files, but there is no functional difference. And I managed to cancel the download in Firefox. It's probably some MEGA fuckery with how it downloads files, but could someone verify whether it's malware or not?

 

[whippetmaster]

Restarting the computer should stop any running processes that may be preventing its deletion. If you're especially worried, you can restart in safe mode and run the anti-virus (if needed) then delete it.
Happened to me before when I downloaded a folder, extracted it and moved the extracted folder elsewhere then went to delete it which didn't work at all. It was on windows 7 and all I could figure out was some kind of task was running which was preventing it from being deleted. I even tried a couple of cmd commands to help delete it and it wouldn't do it. Plus, the folder was checked by 2 different antivirus and was clean.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Thanks, I managed to delete it without issues on Safe Mode.

 

[MissFortune]

For what it's worth, I ran that file through a VM and it deleted fine, same went for my actual system. Doesn't seem to leave traces of any kind from what I saw.

 

[anne O'nymous]

For what it's worth, I ran that file through a VM and it deleted fine, same went for my actual system. Doesn't seem to leave traces of any kind from what I saw.

From what he said, it looks more like a download that wasn't finalized. What explain that he couldn't interact with the file (still in writing state), couldn't start a task that need to know its size (still not definitively defined), and why his browser couldn't achieve to download it again (since it was actually still doing this).
I assume that the initial "restart the computer" failed due to some "continue any unfinished download" configuration, that wasn't triggered by the safe mode, since it limit to the strict minimum the processes started.