Ben Allfree

Occasionally, I use the Sysinternals Process Explorer to see who has a death-grip on a file. Using this tool, you can release locked file handles when all other measures fail.

It can’t get every file handle to release, but it is certainly a good troubleshooting step even if it can’t break the file lock.

Suppose I need to re-compile GrooveOOM.dll, but somebody has it locked and I can’t figure out who.

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First, I search for the DLL

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I see that Outlook has it. If closing Outlook doesn’t do the trick, then I can force the handle closed with a right click in the main window.

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XVI32 is my hex editor of choice. It supports highlighting and file drag/drop. Does it need to be any more complicated?

It is also one of the only tools I know of that will open extremely large files without flinching.

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ReSharper is a code completion and refactoring plugin for C# users of Visual Studio.

My favorite features:

* ‘Using’ directive auto-completion and optimization
* Refactoring methods (even suggests static methods)
* Encapsulating variables into properties

Least favorite:

* Code completion hotkeys sometimes delete symbols next to the cursor. This is by design and for convenience, I just don’t find it convenient
* It takes a long time to load projects with large assemblies that need parsing

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LLBLGen Pro is an O/R mapper of sorts, which means you create your database schema and it creates all the business object classes.

I can not overstate the advantages of this form of development. Gone are DataSets and DataAdapters. Instead, all you deal with is custom collections of table objects. It is even smart enough to map relations, so you can do things like:

foreach (CustomerEntity c in customersCollection)
   foreach (OrderEntity o in customer.Orders)
      Console.WriteLine(o.Name);

It takes about 2 weeks to really get the hang of it, but you’d be spending that time writing your business classes anyway, so it’s an immediate win.