Find who has files open in Windows Server 2008
I’m sure that I’m not the only one who has become accustomed to opening up Computer Management on a server, and looking in the shared folders in order to find out who has a file open. Well, that was Windows Server 2003. Now that we have Windows Server 2008, it’s just a little bit different.
Here’s how you do it.
In Server Manager, expand Roles, then expand File Services, and click on “Share and Storage Management”.
On the far right of Server Manager, in the actions pain, click on “Manage Open Files”.
After clicking on the Manage Open Files option, the Manage Open Files Dialog will pop up. Which, although it looks a little different from what you’re used to, performs all of the functions you would expect.
Comments
Does not work with Remote Desktop
This is a great tip! Thanks for the screenshots for Server 2008.
Unfortunately, this only works for shares or mapped drives to the file server. It would be great is Microsoft provided a tool to view open files for Remote Desktop sessions.
Hi Mike
After realising this feature is still around I've been looking into alternate ways of reaching this. The best way I found was to run mmc (from start->run) and add the computer management snap-in (which looks a lot more like the old server 2k3 gui). Select local machine - assuming you are logged in at the server or using remote desktop.
The open files feature is under computer management->system tools->shared folders->open files (sound familiar?). Once you have this part open you can save the console in windows\system32 (activate from run->cmd->yourconsolename.msc) or better still save it on the desktop and just double-click to open.
Is there a way to do this from the command line?
Is there a way to see if someone has a file open from the command line...(From a different computer on the network?)
Is there a way to remotely close the open files remotely from the command line??
net session is your friend
NET SESSION
[\\computername] [/DELETE] [/LIST]
do it from the server
optionally specify the computer session you're interested in
That is pretty handy.
Thanks for the tip, that is pretty handy. To be honest, I've been using computer management from my desktop more than anything else, I just open it and connect to the server.
Most of the time I'm trying to find out who has a particular file open, and it's pretty easy to sort by shares that way.
Thanks!
Thanks for this
So I'm not the only one wondering why M$ have to rehash everything and hide all the useful stuff. Thanks for this extremely useful tip. We used this feature all the time in 2k3 to minimise disruption when rebooting production servers. Glad to have it back.
thank you
thank you for your help
superb,...
I've been searching for this part until i read this item!
Thankx
THANK YOU!
I've looked for that numerous times. So a sincere thank you to Mike.
and my most sarcastic "Thank you" possible for Microsoft for taking something that was relitively easy and adding numerous clicks to get there.
I also miss being able to just right click on the (Local Computer) under manage and just put in any computer on the network. Another shortcut gone..
Take the most frequent tasks and make them harder to get too!
Like needing to at least 2 different interfaces in SBS2008 for user creation. Add a user, then Add an e-mail alias..
Glad it helped! You can
Glad it helped!
You can still go into manage of other computers on the network from Vista and XP, I still use that method to check for open files.
As for SBS, I take it you're using SBS 2008? I actually haven't used it yet, still have a couple of SBS 2003 machine around though. That is too bad if you can't create the alias from within SBS. Of course, you could use the email creation policy (I can't particularly remember what they are called off the top of my head) to make a alias of whatever your standard is.