Winxp some way to tell what program is accessing a drive

[DragonfireKP]

Hello,
Is there some way in WinXP to tell what program is holding on to my external USB drive so I can close it and remove the drive? I can't be rebooting every time I need to take it to another PC. Even when I close down all applications, it still won't release. It's a Western Digital, and I've tried closing the WDDMStatus.exe, but that's not the problem. I need to find out exactly what's holding it so I can fix the problem. I've tried dong a "full stop" on the drive, but the problem persists. I'm suspicious of the Norton Security Suite, but I want to be sure that I'm getting the right program. Thanks.

 

[treefrog07]

Usually selecting another drive in windows explorer, or closing windows explorer will allow you to safely shut it down. If Norton is scanning it, it is in use and cannot be shut down using the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature. The next time it happens, shut down Norton and try it. Then restart Norton.

 

[Hawkeye22]

You can try diskmon. I haven't used it myself, but it sounds like it should do the trick. Also Mark Russinovich has written a ton of good stuff that gets contributed to microsoft.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896646