Can a program delete its own executable

I found two articles here which can solve your problem

http://www.catch22.net/tuts/selfdel

http://blogorama.nerdworks.in/comment.aspx?entryID=21

One way to do this is to use the MoveFileEx function with the MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT flag and a NULL destination. According to the documentation, this:

registers the lpExistingFileName file to be deleted when the system restarts. If lpExistingFileName refers to a directory, the system removes the directory at restart only if the directory is empty.

Check out the similar stack discussion Self deletable application in C# in one executable

It's possible to do this on Linux. You'll find that it is generally not possible to delete a running executable on Windows. However, you can have Windows delete the EXE for you on the next reboot: http://www.howtodothings.com/computers/a1402-delete-a-running-exe.html

If you want the file deleted after it's been run, you could simply ask the user to delete it. If the reason you want this is as a security measure, then what you're doing is misguided. The user could circumvent this by simply making a copy of the file first.

You can use windows scheduler to schedule a task to delete your program after X seconds.

Command line: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb736357%28VS.85%29.aspx

Or API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa383608%28VS.85%29.aspx

You can run another application, which would wait for parent process to terminate, and then delete its executable.

Until that exe is in memory, it will not be able to delete itself. However, it can register with the system a task for deleting itself after a set time period of gap when it would be expected to be completing its execution.