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Sophos Anti-Virus for NetApp Storage Systems: files locked by the anti-virus server

With Sophos Anti-Virus for NetApp Storage Systems, files can become locked by the anti-virus server, for example, when being copied or deleted. The following error message may be displayed:

The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

The locking happens because the 'Sophos Anti-virus for NetApp' service opens the file to be scanned in a separate thread, and the on-access scanner then also picks up the file to scan it. If the scan has not finished within 60 seconds, the thread is terminated but the file handle is still owned by another process. The file then becomes locked.

What to do

There are several different things you can do to alleviate this issue:

Technical details

The example below demonstrates the problem. If you type:

L:\>del /s /q l:\dsavtest\*.*

The following is displayed, and the file becomes locked:

l:\dsavtest\BEU\20050110.zip
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.