from what you've described, I think you have been HiJacked in some fashion....the attempt to play the video file initiated a sequence of events, and I bet you are infected as of this point...what I'm hoping (for your sake) is that the infection is limited to the presence of the video file on your machine...but I suspect it isn't...what I'm thinking (because of the fact you can't get rid of it in safe mode) is that it has attached itself to a system process...

now, I know from experience you can kill off a hell of a lot of system processes before you actually cripple your system (of course rebooting solves the issues, as said processes start right up again)....explorer.exe is one of the processes that should cripple your OS if you terminate it....what I've done in the past is to just start killing off processes and see what happens...worst case I had to hit the restart button on the box to reboot as I had crippled the OS to the point that I couldn't use the start bar to do so...The_Point being you hopefully can start randomly terminating processes and after you do so for each one, try the deleting of the file...what I would do is have folders open with the files you want to delete...kill processes via task manager, and try deletion at each step...

now, here's the way I look at situations like yours: at some point it becomes obvious that a LOT of time is being spent....and maybe a LOT more is required...so what I do is to just take a nice deep breath, take a thalamic pause, and shrug my shoulders, backup all data, and do a nice clean install and be COMPLETELY POSITIVE that the problem will be gone when I get done...

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
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