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

windows linux command-line filesystems
Daniel Fone picture Daniel Fone · Aug 19, 2008 · Viewed 117.1k times · Source

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.

Answer

Jay Hofacker picture Jay Hofacker · Aug 19, 2008

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

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