Is there a way to disable file locking, system-wide, for windows xp or 7?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_locking

I am willing to risk the "interceding update problem"

Edited November 16, 201213 yr by mraeryceos

Can you be more precise about your goal ? Unlocker does a pretty good job and there is a portable version.

Can you be more precise about your goal ? Unlocker does a pretty good job and there is a portable version.

I changed the question: added "system-wide"

That's not a goal. Are you trying to back up locked files, or just experimenting with corruption?

My goal is to experiment in corruption. Exactly. I will backup system files, and watch for changes.

Then the "easiest" way is to use something that will backup all files opened and the possible ways of doing this are:

- using a SAN and taking a snapshot of the drives. But for most people it isn't easy to put it and might need a lot of money to create/buy a SAN.

- using a virtual machine and snapshot the virtual drive but you'll need to disable the tools (like some part of vmware tools for Vmware VM) that synchronize the snapshots with the guest OS using vss (not for XP as vss doesn't exist for xp).

Since there doesn't appear to be a registry setting, like in Win9x (see http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/218/), I was hoping for a cracked version of windows files that have the file locking disabled. I believe this would be kernel32.dll, that contains routines FileLock and FileLockEx. If these routines do nothing when called, then there would be no file locking.

Edited April 25, 201313 yr by mraeryceos

OS using vss (not for XP as vss doesn't exist for xp).

Are you sure XP does not have vss?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb968832(v=vs.85).aspx

Run-time requirements

VSS is supported on Microsoft Windows XP and later.

(learning that all these years I've been using something that doesn' t exist may be too much a shock for my poor, old heart )

jaclaz

Thanks for correcting Jaclaz (i suppose i was thinking about windows 2000 when i wrote this).

Thanks for correcting Jaclaz (i suppose i was thinking about windows 2000 when i wrote this).

Yep ,the "biggest chunk" of changes was introduced with XP, and this is IMHO the reason why Ken Kato's VDK worked perfectly with 2K and sometimes could not be stopped/uninstalled/reinstalled/restarted in XP (and this could suggest that the VSS subsystem actually introduces some added "locking" at least with disk objects).

Back to topic, never heard of a "disabled file locking" kernel , maybe for the sake of the tests getting higher privileges (System) might be enough?

Just in case:

http://www.grubletrang.com/SoftwareList.aspx

http://www.grubletrang.com/Software.aspx?app=PowerPrompt

jaclaz

http://www.grubletrang.com/SoftwareList.aspx

http://www.grubletrang.com/Software.aspx?app=PowerPrompt

Nice. Not what I was looking for, but nice.

Nice. Not what I was looking for, but nice.

JFYI, same or similar for Vista or later:

http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=17501

jaclaz

I am using Carbonite as a real-time backup program, and was hoping to keep VSS disabled on WinXP.

This is a file patcher for Windows XP SP2 (and likely SP3) and Windows 7 SP1, that will partially disable file locks. Unfortunately, even with the hack to disable file locks, Carbonite was still locking files while I was trying to work with them. If it had worked, I wouldn't have minded the occasional corrupted file in the versioning backup (in the rare case where Carbonite was reading as a file was being written to).

filenolock.zip

Edited April 25, 201313 yr by mraeryceos