How can I determine whether a specific file is open in Windows

Question

One of my favourite tools for linux is lsof - a real swiss army knife   Today I found myself wondering which programs on a WinXP system had a specific file open  Is there any equivalent utility to lsof  Additionally  the file in question was over a network share so I m not sure if that complicates matters

User · Answer

One equivalent of lsof could be combined output from Sysinternals  handle and listdlls  i e    c  SysInternals gt handle       ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ gvim exe pid  5380 FOO alois mahdal    10  File   RW-    C  Windows    1C  File   RW-    D  some locked path OpenFile txt        c  SysInternals gt listdlls       ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Listdlls exe pid  6840 Command line  listdlls    Base        Size      Version         Path   0x00400000  0x29000   2 25 0000 0000  D  opt SysinternalsSuite Listdlls exe   0x76ed0000  0x180000  6 01 7601 17725  C  Windows SysWOW64 ntdll dll        c  SysInternals gt listdlls   Unfortunately  you have to  run as Administrator  to be able to  use them   Also listdlls and handle do not produce continuous table-like form so filtering filename would hide PID  findstr  c pid   c  lt filename gt  should get you very close with both utilities  though  c  SysinternalsSuite gt handle   findstr  c pid   c Driver pm System pid  4   lt unable to open process gt  smss exe pid  308 NT AUTHORITY SYSTEM avgrsa exe pid  384 NT AUTHORITY SYSTEM       cmd exe pid  7140 FOO alois mahdal conhost exe pid  1212 FOO alois mahdal gvim exe pid  3408 FOO alois mahdal   188  File   RW-    D  some locked path OpenFile txt taskmgr exe pid  6016 FOO alois mahdal         Here we can see that gvim exe is the one having this file open

User · Answer

In OpenedFilesView  under the Options menu  there is a menu item named  Show Network Files    Perhaps with that enabled  the aforementioned utility is of some use

User · Answer

Use Process Explorer from the Sysinternals Suite  the Find Handle or DLL function will let you search for the process with that file open

User · Answer

Try Unlocker   The Unlocker site has a nifty chart  scroll down after following the link  that shows a comparison to other tools  Obviously such comparisons are usually biased since they are typically written by the tool author  but the chart at least lists the alternatives so that you can try them for yourself

User · Answer

The equivalent of lsof -p pid is the combined output from sysinternals handle and listdlls  ie  handle -p pid listdlls -p pid   you can find out pid with sysinternals pslist

User · Answer

If you right-click on your  Computer   or  My Computer   icon and select  Manage  from the pop-up menu  that ll take you to the Computer Management console   In there  under System Tools Shared Folders  you ll find  Open Files   This is probably close to what you want  but if the file is on a network share then you d need to do the same thing on the server on which the file lives

User · Answer

There is a program  OpenFiles   seems to be part of windows 7  Seems that it can do what you want  It can list files opened by remote users  through file share  and  after calling   openfiles  Local on  and a system restart  it should be able to show files opened locally  The latter is said to have performance penalties

User · Answer

Try Handle   Filemon  amp  Regmon are also great for trying to figure out what the duce program foo is doing to your system

User · Answer

Use Process Explorer to find the process id  Then use Handle to find out what files are open    Eg handle -p   I like this approach because you are using utilities from Microsoft itself

User · Answer

If the file is a  dll then you can use the TaskList command line app to see whose got it open   TaskList  M nameof dll

[windows] How can I determine whether a specific file is open in Windows?

Examples related to windows

Examples related to linux

Examples related to command-line

Examples related to filesystems