How to tell who is using a shared file (and how to close it!)

I've often had the problem, where a file is in use by an application somewhere on the network, and we can't find out who - as it needs to be deleted/renamed/opened properly etc. The way to do this: On the server with the file shared: - Go to start > Run > type compmgmt.msc - Under 'System Tools' expand 'Shared Folders' - Go to 'Open Files' That lists all the files in use by network users, right click on them and click 'Close Open File' to close it!

Using Netlimiter to control speeds of computers internet connection over a network

Recently I've been on holidays, with my shiny copy of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, I intended to spend a great deal of it relaxing, and shooting people online. Unfortunately, my little brothers and sisters are also on their high school holidays (which go for a great deal longer..) and want to watch videos of football and wrestling on youtube, and refresh their bloated Myspace pages. This means my ping spikes to 999 and my gaming fun ends.

I'd tried all of the bartering and negotiating, to no avail, I even pulled out the LAN for a bit, but I can't leave it out all the time. So I turned to Netlimiter, a program used for bandwidth monitoring and shaping.

I'd already been using RealVNC to close down bandwidth hogging applications on the other computers, so I used that to install Netlimiter. From there I simply went to View -> All Tools -> Permissions Editor, and then ticked 'Monitor' and 'Control' under the Guest account (you may like to assign it to a local passworded account).

Then on my Netlimiter, I went to View -> All Tools -> Remote Administration and entered the computer name, username as 'Guest', refresh time as 1000 & Automatic, clicked save, then clicked connect, entered no password for guest, and away she goes.

From there, you simply choose what to limit the connections down and upload speeds to:


To do this, I changed the units to KB from the dropdown, and set the limits to 4 download and 2 upload, seeing as I'm only on a 512kb connection. You might like to be more generous. You can then tick it on and off at your pleasure.

It's working a charm, I'm wasting my days playing games, my brothers and sisters haven't noticed (I even forgot to turn it off when I went away for the weekend - no complaints), everyone is happy.