Easy Way to Find Who has a File Open 1

[jmarquart]

I have found this script to be quite useful for finding who has opened files:

http://www.winscriptingsolutions.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=24374

Or

http://www.winnet.mag

(search for InstantDoc ID:24374)

Note: I had to remark out two lines in order to get this script to compile (see below)

'BEGIN CALLOUT A
'END CALLOUT A

 

[rb4]

Hi,

Tried this but i am getting blank excel sheet.
file is edit.rep
and located in \\gda30 server.

Please help.

 

[jmarquart]

Make sure when it asks you for the server name you are just putting in gda30 not \\gda30. I have tried this script on both Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 servers with file and print sharing on of course - I am also a member of the Administrators group. One thing that caught me off guard was one of our Win2k servers is set not to show file extensions. I had a file open called pwrchute.doc and it did not come up in the spreadsheet when I did a search on .doc. However if I typed in just pwr the file displayed.

You may want to also try mapping a drive letter to the \\gda30 share as I have had better results finding open files when they are opened from a mapped drive. Also keep in mind that some files will not be displayed as being open like .html and .log files etc. - since they may not be locked as open files - however if you search for part of the folder name where they are located - this is displayed.

I have also noticed some strange behaviour on Terminal servers with SP4 installed and the latest RPC patches from Microsoft - these updates seemed to have disabled the Terminal Server from showing any open files that terminal session users have open.

So much for the reliability of seeing open files with the built in tools from Microsoft - if you really want to see what is going on you will need to use a 3rd party utility like Process Explorer (this ALWAYS works) -

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml