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PendMoves v1.3 and MoveFile v1.02

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By Mark Russinovich Published: September 17, 2020

Download Download PendMoves and MoveFile (988 KB)

Introduction

There are several applications, such as service packs and hotfixes, that must replace a file that's in use and is unable to. Windows therefore provides the MoveFileEx API to rename or delete a file and allows the caller to specify that they want the operation to take place the next time the system boots,before the files are referenced. Session Manager performs this task by reading the registered rename and delete commands from the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations value.

PendMoves Usage

This applet dumps the contents of the pending rename/delete value and also reports an error when the source file is notaccessible.

Usage: pendmoves
Here is example output that shows a temporary installation file is scheduled for deletion at the next reboot:

C:\\>pendmoves 
PendMove v1.2 
Copyright (C) 2013 Mark Russinovich 
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com  

Source: C:\\Config.Msi\\3ec7bbbf.rbf 
Target: DELETE

MoveFile usage

The included MoveFile utility allows you to schedule move and delete commands for the next reboot: usage: movefile [source] [dest]
Specifying an empty destination ("") deletes the source at boot. An example that deletes test.exe is:

movefile test.exe ""

Download Download PendMoves and MoveFile (988 KB)