Watch those Files

When you encounter files that Windows reports as being

opened elsewhere or locked, but you can't seem to find where or why it is

open, built-in commands like 'OpenFiles' (refer to Unexplored World of Win

XP, January 2005) are of little help in actually tracking down the culprit.

Here's where Filemon from SysInternals comes of use. Besides simply telling

you what files are open, it goes several levels deeper. It also tells you which

files are open; the process that has it open and the current state of the file.

Click on the process to find out what it is and where it ran from. On a typical

desktop, you have a few programs that you did not start yourself and that

don't appear in your Startup list either. Files opened by such processes can

be traced from here. A typical listing will have several entries. You can use

the program's filtering capabilities to see only a subset of the information

and locate what you require.

The Filemon UI gives us details on the processes that are running, what request is given, its time, path and result of request, and attributes like offset, length, etc You can select a particular process and see its properties such as name, the path it ran from, its version, command line and the user who is running it Double clicking on a process opens an Explorer window with the location it ran from to help locate the executable Use the filtering capability to list only processes of a certain type. Here, we're listing only instances of Word

Abe Kurian