web.config locked by w3wp.exe

Question

I've got a weird problem. It looks like if my IIS6 locked an application's web.config. If I try to edit it, Windows complains that the web.config is used by another process.

Using Process Explorer I can see that the file is owned by w3wp.exe. Removing the virtual directory and stopping the website wasn't useful at all.

Any idea (I cannot stop the whole server since a lot of sites are hosted in it)?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I would try stopping the application pool for the website that is accessing the web.config.

Answer 2

I had this problem, stopping the application pool didn't help. I then tried launching my text edited as administrator, and then that allowed me to save the file. Unfortunately I don't know if I needed to stop the application pool or not in the end...