You can delete file handles from the handles table by selecting the "Delete" item from the &popmenu; that comes up when you click with mouse button 2 onto the entries in the table.

For each entry that is deleted this way, all following nodes are moved towards the front of the handles table from OS2SYS.INI and their entry in the display is removed.

Warning: xfix does not prevent you from deleting handles which are needed for the WPS to work. You should only delete a handle if you know it is not used. Deleting handles can solidly break things (program objects, folder positions, or even the Desktop completely). See About WPS file handles for more about how handles are used in the WPS.

You should pay special attention to the "Refcs." column in the handles list:

Note that these two are the only references that xfix can detect at the moment. xfix cannot find out presently whether the handle is currently the target of a program object or shadow or whatever. In other words, if the "Refcs." field is empty, this does not mean that deleting the handle won't break things.

Keep in mind that selecting "Delete" does not update OS2SYS.INI yet. This only happens if you select "Write back to OS2SYS.INI" from the xfix menu. As a result, if you accidentally remove the wrong entry, you have not ruined your system yet... you can then restart xfix to try again.

Before using "Write back...", make sure the following is true:

If you delete handles this way, the following fields in the handles list will change: