Who is locking this file

Rambling Biped. Feb 01, 1 Minute Read. Reply 3. Facebook Twitter Reddit LinkedIn. Will Nave. Main Areas of Contribution:. Track Progress. Earn Credits. Note: the application requires admin permissions. If for some reasons you don't like my program, I recommend you to try Lock Hunter. I was having trouble finding out the process that locked my epmd.

So, I thought of giving it a try and it worked so, this can be another option :. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Find out which process is locking a file or folder in Windows Ask Question. Asked 11 years, 8 months ago. Active 1 month ago. Viewed 1. How can I find out which process is locking a file or folder in Windows? For instance, when trying to delete a folder, Windows reports this: The action can't be completed because the folder is open in another program Happens the same with a file, but how do I find out what program or application is currently using it and preventing me from deleting the file or folder?

Improve this question. See this ServerFault question. Is your file a video? You may find that Windows Explorer itself is "using" the file How is this a duplicate? He's specifically asking how to find out which process is locking a file, not how to delete a locked file.

I can't add an built-in, simpler answer here because it was incorrectly marked as a dupe, nor can I add it to the other thread because that only applies to XP. Imagine living in and Windows still doesn't just tell you which process is using the file when it reports the error. Show 3 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Wouter 1 1 silver badge 7 7 bronze badges.

If we're willing to restart to enable something, why wouldn't we just restart to access the folder? I don't get how this solved OP's problem when "just reboot your machine" would have been much easier and still required a reboot. NicHartley Because enabling it would allow it to work next time. Show 5 more comments. Svish Svish Note: the Resource Monitor didn't find any associated handles in my case whereas Process Explorer as described above did.

ComFreek Well, ProcessExplorer might be more powerful in many cases, but for me Resource Monitor have always found the application locking the file I'm trying to do something with. I also prefer it to Process Explorer simply because it's right there in the OS. No need for an extra download and an extra shortcut somewhere. I couldn't find this in Process Explorer, but it was easy to locate with these instructions in Resource Manager. ComFreek In my case it was just the other case: Process Explorer didn't find the handle, whereas Resource Monitor did.

Show 16 more comments. WhoLockMe - Explorer extension which adds a right-click menu option N. Shevek Shevek 16k 6 6 gold badges 43 43 silver badges 75 75 bronze badges. In Windows 7, if you try to delete a file that is locked, the error message will tell you which process has it locked — Garry English.

From their website: "Promotional feature: Fully optional Delta toolbar. GarryEnglish for some reason this isn't always the case. Windows 7 was unable to tell me the culprit. WhoLockMe does not work on Windows 7.

GarryEnglish- As stated by GuiSim, this is for sure not always the case, and in my experience, it is rarely the case. Sambit is a Mechanical Engineer By qualification who loves to write about Windows 10 and solutions to weirdest possible problems. Sambit Koley. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Footer Contact us. Enter your email address:.