Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

One of the things i hate most on Windows is it’s file locking – completely different from what Unix-based operating systems do, Windows’s file locking is mandatory, so if an application has an exclusive lock on the file, you can’t do anything with it. While each of the two approaches has their drawbacks and advantages, and what was done in Windows probably has a very valid reasoning behind it, i still don’t like it.

However it is possible to remove handles from applications, and set the file free again. For a long time i’ve used Process Explorer to do this. The problem with this approach was that i had to guess the application, look through all it’s filehandles, find my file, and then kill the handle. It was rather cumbersome, but it worked.

But a few days ago, i walked across this little gem: Unlocker. It’s method is not different from the Process Explorer way, except that the program does all the work for you. The good thing about it is that it can even be used by normal users (where these problems usually happen with audio/video files).