How do you find what process is holding a file open in Windows?

I’ve had success with Sysinternals Process Explorer. With this, you can search to find what process(es) have a file open, and you can use it to close the handle(s) if you want. Of course, it is safer to close the whole process. Exercise caution and judgement.

To find a specific file, use the menu option Find->Find Handle or DLL... Type in part of the path to the file. The list of processes will appear below.

If you prefer command line, Sysinternals suite includes command line tool Handle, that lists open handles.

Examples

  • c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "e:\" (finds all files opened from drive e:\“
  • c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "file-or-path-in-question"

Related Posts:

  1. How to delete cached temporarily credentials for a network share on a Windows machine without rebooting or logging off [duplicate]
  2. How to configure a Windows machine to allow file sharing with a DNS alias
  3. What exactly are DLL files, and how do they work?
  4. The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)
  5. ‘npm’ is not recognized as internal or external command, operable program or batch file
  6. Difference between xcopy and robocopy
  7. The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect inside batch
  8. Bat file to run a .exe at the command prompt
  9. How can I open Java .class files in a human-readable way?
  10. Opening a remote machine’s Windows C drive
  11. Why does CreateProcess give error 193 (%1 is not a valid Win32 app)
  12. Taskkill /f doesn’t kill a process
  13. Bluescreen on windows 10 after using android emulator
  14. XCOPY: Overwrite all without prompt in BATCH
  15. How to install and run the Nmap program through Cygwin in Windows?
  16. How to compile C program on command line using MinGW?
  17. All links in my site start with localhost?
  18. WordPress database setup Windows 2016 IIS
  19. How do I tell Git for Windows where to find my private RSA key?
  20. How to send ctrl+alt+del using Remote Desktop?
  21. What’s the command-line utility in Windows to do a reverse DNS look-up?
  22. Useful Command-line Commands on Windows
  23. How do you add a Windows environment variable without rebooting?
  24. hosts file ignored, how to troubleshoot?
  25. How to refresh hosts file without rebooting
  26. How to sleep in a batch file?
  27. Resolve host name from IP address
  28. Run a .bat file in a scheduled task without a window
  29. Command line to list users in a Windows Active Directory group?
  30. What is Active Directory Domain Services and how does it work?
  31. Is there a global, persistent CMD history?
  32. How do I diff two text files in Windows Powershell?
  33. In Windows, using the command line, how do you check if a remote port is open?
  34. Does Windows have a built-in ZIP command for the command line?
  35. Can you run Docker natively on the new Windows 10 (Ubuntu) bash userspace?
  36. How does CTRL-ALT-DEL to log in make Windows more secure?
  37. How to check if a port is blocked on a Windows machine?
  38. How do I force sync the time on Windows Workstation or Server?
  39. How do I create a symbolic link in Windows?
  40. Best practice: Should I always install a fresh OS for new employees?
  41. How can I tell what version of IIS is installed?
  42. Where can I find data stored by a Windows Service running as “Local System Account”?
  43. How can I connect to a Windows server using a Command Line Interface? (CLI)
  44. Windows server last reboot time
  45. Windows Active Directory naming best practices?
  46. Why hasn’t rsync caught on in the Windows world? [closed]
  47. Boot and Install Windows from a USB thumb drive
  48. How to fix PuTTY showing garbled characters? [closed]
  49. How do you free up a port being held open by dead process?
  50. What is the Windows equivalent of Unix “whoami” command?
  51. Alternatives to Splunk?
  52. How to fix “VirtualBox Interface has active connections” error in Windows?
  53. outputting ascii table in C++
  54. Tensorflow import error: No module named ‘tensorflow’
  55. A fatal error occurred while creating a TLS client credential. The internal error state is 10013
  56. How can I install pip on Windows?
  57. bash: npm: command not found?
  58. Setting Windows PowerShell environment variables
  59. finding dll for “The specified module could not be found”
  60. Windows 7 exception code: 0xc0000409
  61. Filename too long in Git for Windows
  62. How to remove anaconda from windows completely?
  63. How to solve “The directory is not empty” error when running rmdir command in a batch script?
  64. What languages are Windows, Mac OS X and Linux written in?
  65. stop all instances of node.js server
  66. LNK1168: cannot open debug\file.exe for writing
  67. Windows Activator .bat Text
  68. “rm -rf” equivalent for Windows?
  69. VC++ fatal error LNK1168: cannot open filename.exe for writing
  70. UnicodeDecodeError: ‘charmap’ codec can’t decode byte X in position Y: character maps to
  71. Xampp MySQL not starting – “Attempting to start MySQL service…”
  72. Python 3.2 Unable to import urllib2 (ImportError: No module named urllib2)
  73. How to stop Python closing immediately when executed in Microsoft Windows
  74. python pip on Windows – command ‘cl.exe’ failed
  75. Anaconda Installed but Cannot Launch Navigator
  76. “Javac” doesn’t work correctly on Windows 10
  77. SVN admin management GUI tool
  78. How to get the text cursor position in Windows?
  79. How can I run a program from a batch file without leaving the console open after the program starts?
  80. What exactly is the scope of Access Violation ‘0xc0000005’?
  81. How do I get the current username in Windows PowerShell?
  82. Open File in Another Directory (Python)
  83. batch file from scheduled task returns code 2147942401
  84. In Windows cmd, how do I prompt for user input and use the result in another command?
  85. CALL command vs. START with /WAIT option
  86. BAT file to map to network drive without running as admin
  87. How to use/install GNU binutils (objdump)
  88. Anaconda “failed to create process”
  89. “NODE_ENV” is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable command or batch file
  90. Batch command for ImageMagick to convert all files in a directory and sub-directories on windows
  91. how to empty recyclebin through command prompt?
  92. moving server can not login
  93. Why doesn’t WP_PLUGIN_DIR definition use DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR?
  94. WP Cli will not execute on Windows
  95. wordpress http to https windows server
  96. One-click WP site generation wih wp-cli on Windows
  97. FTP Connection Information after Installation in Cygwin
  98. WAMP SERVER Command Prompt SET PATH=%PATH%
  99. Migrating WordPress from Windows Server 2008 R2 (IIS v7.5) to CentOS
  100. Perfmon performance counters on WAMP

Leave a Comment