Windows
23 January 2011 0 Comments

Windows 7 – “Folder In Use” Error on Mounted Network Shares

The “Folder in Use” error occurs when a network share on a remote computer is mounted as a disk in Windows Explorer on Windows 7. This post explains how to resolve it.

Problem:

You have mounted a remote network share on your computer, with write access. When moving folders around in the share you get the “Folder In Use” error.

Looking at the opened file handles on the server that hosted the share, you will probably see the ‘Thumbs.db’ files are being written to. This means Windows Explorer is generating Thumbs.db files in the share–which are thumbnail cache files used by Windows Explorer.

Solution:

Completely disabling the use of ‘Thumbs.db’ files will prevent the problem from occurring:

  1. Open the Group Policy Editor (Start -> Run -> ‘gpedit.msc’)
  2. Set to Enabled:
     User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer > Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files
  3. Reboot

A good thread about the same subject can be found here.

Tags: , explorer, folder in use, gpedit.msc, in use, , thumbnails, thumbs, thumbs.db