Maintaining
busy servers is far from easy. You not only have to keep them up and running,
but you also have to make sure the resources are available to users on your
Windows 2000 Server. However, there are times when you’ll want to close those
resources—such as before doing a maintenance backup or other activity that
requires exclusive access to resources.

Several UI
tools will close opened files. To use Computer Management to close open files,
run the management console and expand System Tools | Shared Folders | Open
Files. Then, right-click an individual file to close the file, or right-click
the Open Files node to close them all at once.

You can
automate this process by using a command line. Typing the following command
will close all files opened by network clients:

for /f
"skip=4 tokens=1" %a in ('net files') do net files %a /close

This
command executes the net files /close command on all files from the net
files list. Because the last entry on the net files list is not a file, you’ll
get an error message even though all files were closed.

If you want
to use net files in a batch file, you have to use a slightly different syntax:

for /f "skip=4 tokens=1" %%a
in ('net files') do net files %%a /close

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