Win2Kserver thinks a file is open, but it is not. How do I fix this?

[Mitchydkid]

Howdy,
My companies timesheets are kept on the company server. One employee cannot open his time sheet because the server thinks the file is already open, but this is not the case. I know that rebooting the server has worked in the past, but this is the server and thus I do not wish to kick everyone off the server while it reboots.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[NogginBoink]

If the OS thinks the file is open, trust me, the file is open.

Go to www.sysinternals.com, download handleex, and find out what process has an open handle to the file in question.

 

[Mitchydkid]

Thanks Noggin,
The "system" process had a handle on the file. I killed the handle but still can only open the file as "read only." This is a pretty handy proggy though. Thanks for the info.
--Dale

 

[NogginBoink]

If the file is on a fileshare, it could be open by a remote user. Try stopping the server service and see if that frees up the file.

Killing the handle is an ugly thing to do. That's not very nice to the program using the file. 🙂

 

[Mitchydkid]

Thanks man,
the problem is now fixed thanks to you.
Take care
--Dale