How do I move or delete the $Logfile in Windows 7.

it happens all the damm time.  i know exactly what your problem is,  and i still haven't quite figured this one out myself yet either.  it's pretty retarded that the OS won't even give administrators access to the $files.  -but then again,  if we compiled everything stupid about windows,  this would be just one thing in a long list of quirks,  and design flaws that make absolutely no sense.  many of which,  development has no intention of fixing.  the list is massive,  and for as many flaws as the OS has,  it baffles me that microsoft has the gaul to charge anyone over $$100 of ANY of their products,  let alone that it's legal to sell such broken software with no intention of fixing it.  there are tons of stupid flaws like this that have carried on from windows XP to the present,  and plague every version of windows with no fix in sight,  because dev at microsoft is so damm lazy,  they won't fix or add anything that requires going to far back in history in the sourcecode.  **** most of the original XP coding team is gone,  which explains a lot in terms of software bloat,  excessive resource demands,  performance degradation do to new,  slow code.  i've been using windows since before windows95 when it came in 5.25FLOPPIES,  and XP was the last great release.  windows10 doesn't even come close.  it's just 8.1 with a startbutton,  which they added,  because of customer backlash.  windows8.x was so bad the guy responsible lost his job at microsoft if that gives you an idea of how bad it is.

it's great that microsoft gives you the option to grow and shrink partitions,  and then forbids you from doing it,  because of their own illogical design flaws,  no access $files.  horrible.  no file,  or operating system feature should ever be forbidden from a full on,  locally logged in,  administrator.  administrators don't need microsoft to hold their hand.  most of us know the OS better than most microsoft techsupport people.  that's a fact.

I have tried all the above suggestions to no avail including Perfect Disk and Iolo System Mechanic.  None of the defrag programs worked.  When deleting the file Windows 7 would immediately recreate the file at the END OF THE DRIVE.  Why put a shrink option in if your software is going to block its access.  I finally resolved my issue by backing up with Total Recovery 8 Pro.  Then using their tools command line I formated the c drive followed by a restore.  The restore packs all the files at the beginning of the drive.  I rebooted and selected computer management, disk management, selected the "C" drive - right clicked and selected shrink.  It gave me the option to shrink all the way to the used space.  I backed it off to the size I wanted 115GB and it shrunk the drive.  Everything is working fine.

I hope Microsoft will read these posts and change the philosophy of putting unmovable files at the end of the drive.  At least put them in the middle where we have a shot at shrinkage.

Thanks everyone for helping me along my way.

BTW -- What I did is the way we shrunk drives back in the 70's and early 80's.

Using PerfectDisk Pro Trial and the "Prep for Shrink" function alerted me to the files which couldn't be moved on the disk.  

By using Windows 10 Disk Management function, you can shrink the drive to half it's size, but as noted in this thread, you are prevented from going any further.   You may be surprised to hear that once this Shrink is done and the device rebooted, some of the "unmovable" files will have moved to the middle of the downsized logical disk.  

You will need to disable pagefile.sys from operating on the disk you are trying to shrink.  This is an advanced system setting under performance settings.

You will also need to disable Hibernation and Hiberfil.sys.

To disable the Hibernation feature in Windows and delete the hiberfil.sys file in the process, do this:

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. Type powercfg -h off, then press Enter.

Finally, by using the ""Boot time Defrag" of PD and also repeating the "Prep for Shrink", I was finally able to move the system files towards the beginning of the disk.  

Last stop, back to the Windows 10 Disk Management utility and Shrink my C: drive.

Now I can create a new System Recovery Image and restore it to my new (but smaller) SSD drive!    :-)

A reply was never forthcoming from anyone on the forum - apparently.

It appears to be too technical for anyone to respond to; and is a common event for this forum.

What I know (as best as I can) is this:

• $LogFile is an ever growing file.
• $LogFile is classified as a SH (System Hidden) type file.
• Normal tools provided with the base OS never show any object prefexed with "$".
• The OS considers any file prefixed with "$" to be a system-use only file - do-not-touch by users.

However, the base OS is not real good at cleaning up after itself; and its own tables continue to grow beyond any boundry of commen sense.

While I don't have a clear answer to your question, I hope this sheds some light on the type of file being asked about and how weak the responses are from this forum.

I would recommend searching the web for a proper tool to analyze then reduce the size of the file, since MS does not seem inclined to provide such tools.  I'm certain that the file is needed for proper operation of the OS, though I don't know if it is automatically recreated.

Hi BJB_004,

·         What log file are you referring to?

·         What happens when you try to delete it?

·         Do you receive any error?

Please reply with more information so we can help you in a better way.