Vista - Unlock a file beeing used by another user

Hello everybody
do you know how to unlock a file for wich the system thinks it is beeing
used by another user, like excel or word files ? i mean close every
connection to this file by a powershell script ?

bye
Nico

This is not really possible as far as I know.

What you can do is that you can get all the file descriptors or "open file
pointers" to the file you wish to "release" and see what applications is
currently locking it. But from there I'm pretty sure you cant change the
"sharing policy". So basically if the FD is set to no sharing, you can only
figure out what application is using the file, and if so choose to close that
app to relase the file for what purpose you need it.

"Don Juan (leidegre)" <DonJuanleidegre@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news310035B-0071-4F12-AB44-B9E884700170@microsoft.com...
> This is not really possible as far as I know.
>
> What you can do is that you can get all the file descriptors or "open file
> pointers" to the file you wish to "release" and see what applications is
> currently locking it. But from there I'm pretty sure you cant change the
> "sharing policy". So basically if the FD is set to no sharing, you can
> only
> figure out what application is using the file, and if so choose to close
> that
> app to relase the file for what purpose you need it.

And to figure out which application is using the file, you can use these
Sysinternals tools: procexp.exe or handle.exe. You can get these free at:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...s/default.mspx

--
Keith

I proposed a Community Extensions cmdlet for doing this based on the new
Vista restart manager APIs but I'm the only one that voted for it.

http://www.codeplex.com/PowerShellCX...orkItemId=9089


"Keith Hill [MVP]" <r_keith_hill@mailhot.nospamIdotcom> wrote in message
news815F850-9BC0-4443-8695-D131944D0699@microsoft.com...
> "Don Juan (leidegre)" <DonJuanleidegre@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message news310035B-0071-4F12-AB44-B9E884700170@microsoft.com...
>> This is not really possible as far as I know.
>>
>> What you can do is that you can get all the file descriptors or "open
>> file
>> pointers" to the file you wish to "release" and see what applications is
>> currently locking it. But from there I'm pretty sure you cant change the
>> "sharing policy". So basically if the FD is set to no sharing, you can
>> only
>> figure out what application is using the file, and if so choose to close
>> that
>> app to relase the file for what purpose you need it.
>
> And to figure out which application is using the file, you can use these
> Sysinternals tools: procexp.exe or handle.exe. You can get these free at:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...s/default.mspx
>
> --
> Keith

"Marcel J. Ortiz [MSFT]" <mosoto@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uZ%23qaevoHHA.4960@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>I proposed a Community Extensions cmdlet for doing this based on the new
>Vista restart manager APIs but I'm the only one that voted for it.
>
> http://www.codeplex.com/PowerShellCX...orkItemId=9089
>

Yeah I've been thinking that this would be nice but then I thought -
Sysinternals and PowerShell are now under the same roof so-to-speak. So I
posted a request on the microsoft.public.winternals newsgroup that the
PSTools suite (and I should add handle.exe) should be made available in a
PowerShell version. I've gotten no response to this post "PowerShelled
PSTools - When?" and was starting to get a bit discouraged but then I read
that Jeffrey was helping Mark Russinovich out with some PowerShell issues.
That's made me a bit more optimistic on this support coming from
Sysinternals team at Microsoft.

--
Keith