process explorer
As a long time Linux user (SuSE – OpenSuse), I’ve never thought I would ever need this windows application: Process Explorer
This application shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. So you can see wich program has a particular file or directory open. Handy!
I needed this application to close a hanging java instance: I was uninstalling ESRI’s ArcGIS Server 9.3 Java edition, and it complained about a log file (derby.log) that was used and locked by another application. Of course, it didn’t mentioned which application, so Process Explorer To The Rescue! Just fire it up, and find the derby.log file. The application told me that is was being used by java.exe. So the only thing I needed to do was (in the command line) execute: taskkill /F /PID 00000 and that was it.
