Taking your hint, I just looked at the code in 42230 which uses the Win32 GetFileAttributesEx() function. This function does indeed return an error for an in-use file. Not sure if this is a "feature" or "bug" in the underlying Windows function. I did try FindFirstFile(), which is able to return info on an in-use file. Not sure if this is a reasonable alternative to GFAE(), but wanted to make folks aware of the possibility. It's probably slower, since it can handle wild-cards, and returns a handle for subsequent calls to FindNextFile(). The handle must be closed with FindClose(). I'm not sure what underlying mechanism FindFirstFile() uses, but I'm assuming it accesses the "directory" to get its information, rather than trying to access the file itself. FWIW.