Resolve incorrect username on shared file lock

Locked FileRunning a 2003 file server, with files accessed by many across multiple geographical locations can come with its own challenges. One such challenge is that of file locking, especially on documents which don’t yet support true collaborative working. Such as Office 2007 documents.

Last week one of our end users suffered the same issue, documents being left locked open by a user. However, on this occasion the issue was accentuated by the server reporting the incorrect user name of the user with the read/write access. This has been a known issue for some files on our sites for sometime, however Friday I finally managed to get to the bottom of it.Where as I would normally head over to the open files section of the computer management MMC, this time I headed to the root of the share that was serving the files. Firstly in a bid to recreate the issue for myself, but also to check on permissions etc.

Arriving in the folder triggered an epiphany.. At the top of the folder structure was a temporary file sharing the name of the document in question, however this file actually had a last modified date of sometime in 2012! Obviously this file was hidden from normal view as it was flagged as a system file.

Removing the file cleared the issue of the incorrect user name, and the server then went on to flag the actual culprit to all future locks. It was something so simple it had been overlooked many times.

Mike Hudson

Mike Hudson is a Lead Cyber Security Analyst living and working in Kingston Upon Hull. With extensive experience in Microsoft and Apple technologies, ranging from desktop OS’s to Server OS’s and hardware. By day working as part of an infrastructure team, and by night ridding the world of IT issues through blog posts..

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