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.
Quite often, when trying to delete a folder, Windows reports this:. This error also happens with a file, when we tried to move a file, or delete those file. To get the process holding those folder or file, we can use these two utilities:. You can then close the application if you are able to do that, or just right-click the row and you'll get the option of killing the process End Process right there.
Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Same as Resource Monitor, an individual handle in the list can be killed by selecting it and pressing the delete key or Close Handle. Any suggestions on how to find the culprit? Improve this question. Alan Fleming 73 7 7 bronze badges. You would think that after all this time, the Windows guys would give us a way to do this easily from within Explorer. I wonder why this hasn't happened?
I find that Explorer is very often the problem process that is holding onto a file for no obvious reason. I know this doesn't help you much, but I think I remembered that this was a planned feature of the next Windows release after vista and server.
Issue still exists in Windows Randomly got to this question on unrelated search. When I stumble upon this problem with something holding the file, it's often explorer.
Now you need to restart your explorer. Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Eddie Eddie You can close the handle, but keep in mind, you're pulling the rug out from under an application, results will be unpredictable at best. Walden: Absolutely. When this happens on a file you need to delete, you have the choice of forcing the handle closed, or rebooting.
So far, having done this dozens of times, I have suffered no ill effect. As with any advanced tool, use with caution and judgment. Closing the handles can cause the app to re-use the handle on another file, causing corruption - see Jeff's answer below: serverfault. For explorer, btw, hold ctrl-shift and right-click a blank area of the start menu, and you'll get "Exit Explorer" - ps, not quite Jeff's answer..
It should be noted that ProcessExplorer must be run as Administrator or it may not able to see files open by system processes. Show 11 more comments. Svish Svish 6, 14 14 gold badges 34 34 silver badges 45 45 bronze badges. It's worth noting that it can be hard to find this program on Windows 8 - a search for 'resmon.
Kylotan, Stop wasting time searching. Just run resmon directly from cmd — Pacerier. Pacerier: Nice. I'm not used to things being in the Windows path. Show 9 more comments. Community Bot 1. Mark Sowul Mark Sowul 1, 1 1 gold badge 10 10 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges. It seems strange to me that Windows would immediately re-use the number of a closed handle, rather than continuing to increment the number and only wrapping around when necessary.
That would at least greatly reduce the chances of this problem happening. RichVel Terminating the culprit process is probably better than a complete reboot. DmitryGrigoryev - good point, and in fact I already mentioned that here — RichVel. This is a very important warning, but doesn't answer the question How do you find what process is holding a file open in Windows? Wait for a while as the Process Explorer will list the processes which are using the file. When the search is complete, click on the process in the process tab.
Your problem should be solved. Sambit is a Mechanical Engineer By qualification who loves to write about Windows 10 and solutions to weirdest possible problems.
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