It has many other flavors: Cannot delete file: Access is denied There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use. The file is in use by another program or user. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Of course I only compare here the unlocking features. Process Explorer and Take Control are very good programs featuring much more things than just unlocking folders. The goal of this list is not really to pretend Unlocker is better but instead to provide a list of all other alternative programs in case you have some difficulties with Unlocker.

Unlocker is completely free and will always remain free, which means you can use it free of charge for any purposes. If you are satisfied with Unlocker and want to help Unlocker improve or motivate the development of other quality programs, any amount of donation small or large will be welcome and gratefully appreciated.

This award winning software starts by conducting a deep scan of your registry , checking for file extension errors and other registry conflicts. With RegistryBooster you will see immediate increases in performance and decreases in systemt conflicts.

Unlocker 1.9.1 for 32 and 64 bit - 4/12/2011

- New feature: Made it possible to delete deep directory structures and too long path errors (Path too long, Cannot delete file or folder The file name you specified is not valid or too long. Specify a different file name, The filename or extension is too long, Path too deep, Destination Path Too Long, The file could not be accessed, The path you entered, is too long. Enter a shorter path). Try deleting the folder created by this batch file without the new Unlocker you will understand :)

- Improved UI: Progress bar when deleting large folders

- Improved UI: Fixed all references to previous website in UI

- Fixed Bug: Fix crash which happened with deep paths in old versions

- Fixed Bug: Fixed update check to match new Unlocker website (http://unlocker.emptyloop.com)

- Fixed Installer: Fixed x64 installer for references to non existing assistant

- Promotional feature: Fully optional Bing or Quickstores toolbar depending on location.





Unlocker 1.9.0 for 32 and 64 bit - 5/7/2010

- New feature: Complete support for 64 bit operating systems with signed driver.

- New language: Basque thanks to Beñat Antxustegi.

- New language: Galician thanks to Delio Docampo Cordeiro.

- New language: Macedonian thanks to Nikola Trencevski.

- New language: Malaysian thanks to Arjuna Puteraz.

- Improved behavior: No false positives for 32 bit version.

- Improved behavior: Handles are now sorted by process instead of appearing in random order when launching Unlocker.

- Improved UI: Locked DLL show as DLL instead of handle number.

- Improved UI: Fixed same process appearing differently depending on cases.

- Promotional feature: Fully optional eBay shortcuts, Bing or Quickstores toolbar depending on location.





Unlocker 1.8.9 - 8/3/2010

The rumors of me not working on Unlocker have been greatly exaggerated. I have been very busy with pushing the envelope at work, MBA studies during evenings and week-ends, and life during the time left.



Still, I finally had a little time to address all the reported issues on Unlocker, and Unlocker now supports Windows 7. From a x64 stand point, it took me a couple of hours to get it fully working on my machine. I still have to sign the driver which might require a lot of paperwork, but hopefully it will not take long. For the impatient kind, I can provide alpha versions :)



Interestingly, now that I have a x64 machine, I had no alternative than to get Unlocker working. Despite the increased number of ersatz, none of them really did the job and I really had a motivation to get Unlocker working.



Finally, I addressed the topic of false positives with Unlocker on my my blog. There is no malware in Unlocker and there will never be. And for the record I am not the only one having similar issues.



- Fixed bug: Handles should not be missing anymore on Windows7.

- Fixed bug: Potential conflict with regular explorer use when opening multiple files or other shell extensions such as 7-zip.

- Fixed bug: UI should now appear properly when done from clean install.

- Fixed bug: No hangs due to looping junctions should happen anymore.

- Fixed bug: Deleting junctions will not erase original files anymore.

- Fixed bug: Managing your computer on Windows 7 will not crash anymore.

- Fixed bug: Bitmap handles should not leak anymore from the shell extension.

- Fixed bug: Many other potential sources of bugs and crashes.

- Improved behavior: When deleting files they will be sent first to the recycle bin if possible, only if not possible more abrasive deletion will be used.

- Improved behavior: Unlocker can be started directly from the start menu to browse to the desired file or folder.

- Promotional feature: Fully optional eBay shortcuts, Bing or Quickstores toolbar depending on location.





Unlocker 1.8.8 - 26/10/2009

- Improved behavior: Improved the way DLLs are unloaded.

- Promotional feature: Added fully optional shortcuts to eBay during the installation. Simply untick "eBay shortcuts" in the choose components page during install if you do not wish to have those.





Unlocker 1.8.7 - 01/05/2008

- Fixed bug: Unlocker should not create event logs anymore.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker should not take minutes to close on certain configurations anymore.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker should not lock DLLs not used by Unlocker anymore.

- Fixed bug: Fixed potential driver bug.

- Fixed bug: Miscellaneous handle leaks.

- Improved behavior: Improved deleting/renaming/moving files such as C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash9e.ocx for example.

- Improved behavior: When right-clicking files or folders and selecting Unlocker, those are automatically deselected. It helps with movie files and removable drives.

- Improved UI: Icon looks correct now on Windows Vista

- Promotional feature: Added fully optional shortcuts to eBay during the installation. Simply untick "eBay shortcuts" in the choose components page during install if you do not wish to have those.





Unlocker 1.8.6 - 29/02/2008

- Fixed bug: Delete, move and rename should work better now.

- Fixed bug: Non DLL handles are now listed properly on Vista.

- Fixed bug: List files are compatible with Total Commander again. This bug appeared in version 1.7.7. Thanks to Icfu for spotting it.

- Improved behavior: The executable includes a manifest for better Vista compatibility.

- Promotional feature: Added fully optional shortcuts to eBay during the installation. Simply untick "eBay shortcuts" in the choose components page during install if you do not wish to have those.





Unlocker 1.8.5 - 07/09/2006

- New feature: Copy locked file. There is a new drop entry in the drop down menu which allows you to copy a file which has a handle opened. Very useful to copy .ncb files opened by Visual Studio for example.

- Improved UI: Unlocker Assistant is now multilanguage. Thanks to RDPK7 (Bulgarian), Jiun-Liang Lin (Chinese traditional), Toma Bendasek (Czech), Hoder Balder Marcus Jensen (Danish), Raphael Fetzer (German), Javier L. (Spanish), Tuukka Rantala (Finnish), Ilya Dan (Hebrew), DirektX (Hungarian), Marco D'Amato (Italian), Catbaron (Japanese), Dae-Seok Kim and Kim JaeGeun (Korean), Tommy Skaue (Norwegian), Marcin Wawer (Polish), Rhadoo (Romanian), Dmitry Yerokhin (Russian), Emperror (Slovak), Egzon Beqa (Albanian), Pruthisith Prateepavanich (Thai), Aleg Azarousky (Belarusian), Aleksander 'Quattro' Hropot (Slovenian), Igor Gubaidulin (Lithuanian), Ozzii (Serbian), Adis Imamovich (Bosnian), Mihkel Tonnov (Estonian), Oleksandr 'FLAGER' Sokolnik (Ukrainian)

- Fixed bug: Denied access issue when selecting several files.

- Fixed UI: Fixed many languages problems.





Unlocker 1.8.4 - 24/08/2006

- New language: Belarusian thanks to Aleg Azarousky

- New feature: Access to Delete / Rename / Move options from command line

- Improved behavior: Power users do not need rights to modify registry anymore to run Unlocker as long as Unlocker was installed by an administrator on the machine

- Fixed bug: Renaming now works again.

- Fixed bug: Renaming and Moving on boot now work again.





Unlocker 1.8.3 - 06/05/2006

- New feature: Unlocker Assistant icon can be hidden from the notification area.

- Improved UI: Better error message in case there is a conflict with Unlocker Assistant.

- Fixed bug: UNC and network paths should now work as intended.

- Fixed bug: Strong delete works again. This bug appeared in version 1.7.7. Index.dat and many more should be deleted without rebooting as before now.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker Assistant will detect if it is already running and will only run one instance.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker Assistant will detect if there a program conflicting and properly exit.





Unlocker 1.8.2 - 29/04/2006

- Fixed bug: Unlocker Assistant closed or potentially crashed explorer on W2K SP4.

- Fixed language: Japanese had more character corruptions.





Unlocker 1.8.1 - 03/03/2006

- Fixed bug: Unlocker Assistant closed or potentially crashed explorer. Thanks to Jean-Philippe Mistrot for his patience while testing.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker Assistant launched Unlocker when trying to overwrite a file or folder.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker missed handles at the root of a mapped hard drive.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker failed to list handles on drives that do not allow to create files.

- Fixed bug: Unlocker leaked Icon GDI objects.

- Fixed language: Japanese and Polish languages had character corruptions. Thanks to Catbaron and Keblo for pointing it out.





Unlocker 1.8.0 - 18/02/2006

- New feature: Unlocker Assistant. Unlocker Assistant stays in your system tray bar and automatically launches Unlocker if you are trying to delete/rename/move a file that is locked. So for those who use Unlocker Assistant, no need to right click files or folders anymore. This feature can be deactivated during the install.

- New language: Indonesian thanks to Edi Gunawan Liu





Unlocker 1.7.9 - 04/02/2006

- Improved Installer: Now Unlocker should install well over the previous version without needing to reboot

- New functionality: Unlocker -H or Unlocker -? shows the command line usage

- New functionality: Command line option to generate a log of handles found on a given file

- Fixed bug: Fixed a potential page fault bug in UnlockerDriver5.sys

- Fixed bug: Fixed a bug which caused the locked dll not to appear when right clicking on the root of a drive





Unlocker 1.7.8 - 21/01/2006

- New language: Slovenian thanks to Aleksander 'Quattro' Hropot

- Improved code: Unlocker is now much faster to list handles and to appear. Between 2x and 30x faster depending on the situation. Thanks to schwit for reporting the problem and testing my fixes

- Improved code: Rewrote part of the driver

- Fixed bug: Some processes and their handles were missing depending on their accessing rights, this is fixed now, and ZoneAlarm temporary files handles appear in Unlocker for example. Again thanks to schwit for reporting the problem and testing my fixes

- Fixed bug: If a cd or dvd was removed and a handle was existing, an annoying explorer dialog box would appear and the handle could not be listed

- Fixed bug: Miscellaneous buffers bugs





Unlocker 1.7.7 - 07/01/2006

- New language: Albanian thanks to Egzon Beqa

- New language: Bosnian thanks to Adis Imamovich

- Improved code: Reduced Unlocker.exe from 112.5KB to 72.5KB and reduced UnlockerCOM.dll from 42.5KB to 9KB. You might need to uninstall the previous version and reboot so that to update UnlockerCOM.dll.





Unlocker 1.7.6 - 17/12/2005

- New language: Arabic thanks to Abdullah-Ali

- New language: Catalan thanks to David Rodriguez Teba

- New language: Croatian thanks to Tomislav Tomecic

- New language: Persian thanks to Mohammad Ali 'Profesor' Mokhtari

- New language: Swedish thanks to Konrad Viltersten

- Changed the way the driver is loaded to reduce the problems linked with services

- Improved installer comparing the MD5 of UnlockerCOM.dll if already installed to eliminate unecessary reboots





Unlocker 1.7.5 - 12/11/2005

- New language: Portuguese thanks to Antonio Cunha

- New language: Brazilian Portuguese thanks to Djacir Porto Cavalcante

- New language: Norwegian thanks to Tommy Skaue

- New language: Finnish thanks to Tuukka Rantala

- New language: Lithuanian thanks to Igor Gubaidulin

- New language: Korean thanks to Kim JaeGeun

- Fixed bug: no update information when running silent mode

- Improved UI: version information displayed in all windows

- I now provide MD5 and SHA1 values for the latest Unlocker installer





Unlocker 1.7.4 - 29/10/2005

- Fixed bug: fixed the explorer extension missing bug which appeared for many people on 1.7.3

- Fixed bug: Removed the creation of C:\Unlocker-log-handles.txt





Unlocker 1.7.3 - 01/10/2005

- New Language: Serbian thanks to Ozzii for the translation

- New Language: Thai thanks to Pruthisith Prateepavanich for the translation

- New Language: Greek thanks to Vassilis Mpinakis for the translation

- New Language: Czech thanks to Toma Bendasek for the translation

- New Language: Romanian thanks to Rhadoo for the translation

- New Language: Turkish thanks to Ercan Gulme for the translation

- Fixed bug: fixed an explorer extension bug which listed Unlocker on "My computer" and "Recycle bin"

- Fixed bug: fixed an explorer extension bug which listed Unlocker several times on shortcuts





Unlocker 1.7.2 - 19/09/2005

- New Language: Bulgarian thanks to RDPK7 for the translation

- New Language: replaced Danish thanks to Hoder Balder Marcus Jensen for the translation

- New Language: Ukrainian thanks to Oleksandr 'FLAGER' Sokolnik for the translation

- New Language: Hebrew thanks to Ilya Dan for the translation

- Fixed bug: fixed a bug which could cause problem while uninstalling the device driver

- Fixed bug: fixed bugs which could cause Unlocker to crash





Unlocker 1.7.1 - 22/08/2005

- Improved UI: Windows XP themes support

- Improved UI: Minor tweaks such as displaying version number, auto-sizing buttons, etc.

- New Language: Russian thanks to Dmitry Yerokhin for the translation

- New Language: Danish thanks to Kian Andersen for the translation

- New Language: Hungarian thanks to DirektX for the translation

- New Language: Polish thanks to Marcin Wawer for the translation

- Fixed bug: shell extension and all internals are in unicode now

- Fixed bug: the window should always be visible now





Unlocker 1.7.0 - 08/08/2005

- New functionality: help deleting, renaming and moving objects even if no handle exist. If previous versions of Unlocker only told you "No locking handle found", this new version should help you solve your problems

- New functionality: Short/Long/UNC name file deleting, renaming and moving operations to delete badly named objects. If you do not know what I am talking about, run this batch file and try to delete the folders created at the root of the C: drive without Unlocker and you will understand :D

- New functionality: delete, rename, move on next boot - New functionality: improved delete. Now C:\Documents and Settings\username\Cookies\index.dat can be deleted without killing processes - Improved UI: the webpage link of the update alert is clickable now

- Improved UI: items can be sorted when clicking the listview columns titles

- New Language: Estonian thanks to Mihkel Tonnov for the translation

- New Language: Spanish thanks to Javier L. for the translation

- Fixed bug: the explorer extension does not use msvcrt71.dll anymore since it is not installed by default

- Fixed bug: multiple selection delete and move should work now





Unlocker 1.6.7 - 25/07/2005

- The explorer extension has now its own section and has an icon

- Fixed the the W2K bug for the default association of some file types

- Fixed the multiple selection bug, now only one instance of Unlocker is launched dealing with all selected items at once

- Improved behavior for renaming/moving, the name or destination path are now asked when selecting the action

- Improved UI for renaming: Default button is OK and the focus is set on the text

- Added a list mode to Unlock many items at once from the command line. The syntax is: unlocker.exe listfilename /L (or -L) and it will unlock all the files listed in listfilename





Unlocker 1.6.6 - 13/07/2005

- Added option to move/rename the object Unlocked instead of just deleting it. Thanks to Michael for the suggestion

- Fixed a bug which could cause a reboot. Thanks to Mohammad Khadhrawi for his help while debugging

- Fixed a slow down during the parsing of all system handles. Unlocker should now be as fast as versions prior to 1.6.3 since the slow down appeared in 1.6.3

- Fixed the slow update check. Thanks to Raphael Fetzer for reporting the issue

- Added Chinese Traditional language thanks to Jiun-Liang Lin for the translation

- Added Slovak language thanks to Emperror for the translation

- Added Dutch language thanks to Frank Rijnders for the translation





Unlocker 1.6.5 - 28/06/2005

- Added German language thanks to Raphael Fetzer for the translation

- Added Italian language thanks to Marco D'Amato for the translation

- Fixed missing characters in Japanese version

- Reduced executable size from 68.5KB to 56.5KB, since the executable had grown in size after new features and new languages

- Added automatic check for updates every time Unlocker is started. If a new version has been released Unlocker will inform you only once about it. This can be turned off during the installation in the components section. This will require Unlocker to connect to the internet every time it checks for a new version. For those curious Unlocker is only sending "GET /unlocker/version.txt HTTP/1.0\r

Host: www.emptyloop.com\r

" and nothing else. Thanks to Jean-Paul Chavant and Osman Zeki for the suggestion.



Unlocker 1.6.4 - 15/06/2005

- Due to popular demand, I have added support for other languages. Unlocker is now available in Chinese (Simplified), English, French and Japanese. Thanks to Chen Xi Yang for the Chinese translation. Thanks to Takahiko Nishio and Taeko Tanaka both from the Windows 100% Japanese magazine for the Japanese translation. French translation done by me since I am French :)



Unlocker 1.6.3 - 30/05/2005

- Added a tab-stop on the handles list. Thanks to Michael D. Lawler for the suggestion

- Added a check-box to delete file or folder after unlocking its handles

- Added a button to kill processes when unlocking handles is not enough to delete a file such as C:\Documents and Settings\username\Cookies\index.dat

- Fixed a bug causing Unlocker to hang when a DLL can not be Unloaded such as wininet.dll for example



Unlocker 1.6.2 - 14/05/2005

- Fixed a bug when Unlocker was passed an old dos type path as a parameter

- Added some more error messages for privileges settings. More informations in the FAQ. Thanks to Vidziu for his help while debugging

- Reduced executable size from 72KB to 56.5KB



Unlocker 1.6.1 - 10/05/2005

- Filtered modules locked by processes to only list DLLs

- Unlocker.exe is not packed anymore. Since even MEW was reported as a false positives with poor products such as Norman anti-virus and BOClean anti-trojan. Sad but true.



Unlocker 1.6 - 09/05/2005

- DLLs locked by processes are now listed

- DLLs locked by processes can be unloaded. This make of Unlocker a very useful tool against viruses, trojan and worms that attach DLLs to processes to be invisible. Again I strongly advise to be extremely careful with this functionnality

- Window position and columns sizes are now remembered by Unlocker. Thanks to Michael for the suggestion

- Hovering tooltip displayed when content do not fit in a column. Thanks to Michael for the suggestion

- Changed back to MEW since WinUPack is wrongfully detected as a virus by poor anti-viruses such as McAfee. Unlocker will never contain any virus and it is a shame that McAfee is not able to unpack files packed with WinUPack, and properly unacceptable for a professional tool. Generally speaking if you have any doubt about a file you can submit a file to be scanned by several anti-viruses Virus Total and Jotti VirusScan. Those sites do not install anything on your machine, you just submit a file to them and they scan it by over 13 different anti-viruses. Thanks to all users who had problems for their support



Unlocker 1.5.2 - 07/05/2005

- Fixed a bug that made Unlocker miss handles when the internal names were in internal old dos 8.3 format. Any file from C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Local Settings\Temp for example and many others

- Fixed the randomness of the input focus rectangle, now the Quit button always have the input focus when starting Unlocker

- Saved 2KB by changing the exe packer. It was the very good MEW and now it is the even better WinUPack



Unlocker 1.5.1 - 05/05/2005

- Now you have the choice during install between the Explorer extension or a SendTo shortcut or both or neither. Thanks to Icfu and Marcus for the suggestion

- Added a silent mode for people who want to use unlocker as a command line. The syntax is: unlocker.exe filename /S (or -S) and it will unlock all found handles without showing the window. Thanks to Ghenadie Cotaga for the suggestion



Unlocker 1.5 - 03/05/2005

- Fixed another bug with network mapped drives

- Fixed the default association bug for W2K

- Added "Unlock All" button. Of course I do not need to remind you to be very careful with this and not to try to unlock all handles on C: for example



Unlocker 1.4 - 02/05/2005

- At last Unlocker works on Windows 2000!!!

- Major speedup when listing large number of locks by caching icons of same process



Unlocker 1.3 - 30/04/2005

- Icons' transparency works fine now

- The icons are the correct ones now, not the 32x32 scaled down to 16x16 anymore



Unlocker 1.2 - 29/04/2005

- Much smaller 76KB installer (was 297KB before) by replacing the good Inno-Setup by the even better Nullsoft Scriptable Install System. Also added a shortcut to this webpage and to the uninstaller. Many thanks to Icfu for the tip.

- Unlocker has now an application icon

- Mapped local and network drives bug fixed

- Unicode bug fixed

- Root drives working now



Unlocker 1.1 - 26/04/2005

- Message box showing no locks when no locks are active making people feel sure the tool is running :D

- High privilege processes included in the list now, showing pagefile.sys now for example, I do not recommend unlocking those

- Showing children locks of folders. Example folder1 can be locked because of list1.txt in folder1/folder2/list.txt

- Icons diplayed properly now

- Explorer extension properly removed when uninstalling



Unlocker 1.0 - 24/04/2005