unknown process randomly locking a file

Question

I have a file that needs to be written to on some updates yet very often when reviewing the logs I can see the application needing to write to the file fails in doing so as it's locked by some other application at the time of update. I tried to use process explorer to see if I can pick the moment when the lock occurs but was unsuccessful. Locks are probably very brief. Is there some tool I could use to monitor the file to find out when what locks the file when a failed write occurs?

Answer 1

You were on the right track. Use Process Monitor instead.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Set a filter to only capture events for "path contains your-file-name".