Windows won’t allow you to modify files that open programs have locked. If you try to delete a file and see a message that it’s open in another program, you’ll have to unlock the file (or close the program). In some cases, it may not be clear which program has locked a file. Sometimes, a program or background process may have finished with a file, but not unlocked it properly when it was done. In that case, you must unlock the stubborn file or folder in order to modify the file. Note: Unlocking certain files and deleting them can cause problems with open programs.

1. Unlock File Windows
2. How To Unlock Windows 10

Don’t unlock and delete files that should remain locked, including Windows system files. IObit Unlocker is a useful utility for unlocking files, and it’s free. It even puts a command for unlocking files right on the context menu. After you install the program, you can right-click a stubborn file or folder and select “IObit Unlocker” to open the app with that file selected.

You’ll see a list of processes that have locked the file or folder. You can quickly unlock the file by clicking the “Unlock” button. This method unlocks the file while leaving the process running. Note that this may cause problems if a process expects exclusive access to a file.

You can also click the “Forced Mode” checkbox and then click “Unlock” to forcibly close whatever program is locking access to the file. You’ll lose any unsaved data in any program killed this way. Once the file is unlocked, you can delete, move, or rename it normally. In fact, the IOBit Unlocker application has easy “Unlock & Delete”, “Unlock & Rename”, and “Unlock & Move” options. Just click the arrow to the right of the “Unlock” button. Restart Your Computer Generally, a file won’t be locked after you restart your computer—unless the program that locked it is a startup program that locks the file as soon as you log in. If you have a stubborn file or folder and don’t want to use any of the tricks here, you can try restarting your computer.

I am having an issue with lock files in Windows 2003 Storage Server. E@syfile update service. We use AutoCad which sometimes crashes for whatever reason. When this happens the lock file.

You should be able to delete, move, or rename the file as soon as Windows comes back up. If the file is being locked by a startup program, you can boot to safe mode to delete it instead.

Unlock File Windows

• Try to delete a file in a Windows 2003 server but it shows 'It is being used by another user or program'. Try look for the user who opens the file but nothing found.
• Unlocker: Download Free File Unlocking Utility for Windows - Unlocker is an excellent file unlocking utility which works in Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista.

How To Unlock Windows 10

If you’re on Windows 7, press the F8 key during the startup process and select Safe Mode to boot into safe mode. If you’re using Windows 8 or 10, you’ll have to. Delete (or move) the file in safe mode and restart your computer. There are a variety of other ways to delete locked files. For example, you could use a program to schedule a file deletion when you next restart your computer—the file will be automatically deleted when you reboot. But we’ve found it much easier using one of the methods we’ve detailed here.

Hi we have successfully migrated our previous Windows 2000 server to Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 without problem. We have a small issue with one user and Excel, he on occasion gets Excel files locked on the server which he cannot access to rename delete etc. After the lock. Excel is not crashing and I have asked him to check his Macro routines to see if they are the issue but he assures me they are not. The only way to be able to access the data again is to reboot the fileserver, obviously with 120 users this is not possable in the daytime. Does anyone know of any decent utility to unlock this file without the need to reboot? He restarts his local machine and this still does not release the file on the server so the file lock is in place on the server not his desktop.

When we check open files in computer management the file is not reported as open at all, yet by not being able to rename it or delete it unless we reboot the server implies the server has somewhere got a lock on his data. Running Net files from Dos also does not report this file as open. We have tried using Unlocker but this appears not to work on our 64 bit platform. Has anyone any ideas what to try to remove the problem or of any good unlocker utilities to use??? I am tearing my hair out with this so any help would be much apreciated Thanks in advance Paul Cannon Network Admin - Paul C Sponsored Links.