Error Message "Volume Is Open or in Use" When You Create Volumes by Using the Create Partition Wizard

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This article was previously published under Q277824

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SYMPTOMS

When you attempt to create a volume on a hard disk by using the Create Partition Wizard in the Disk Management snap-in and you format the volume for the NTFS file system, you may receive the following error message:

Volume is open or in use. Request cannot be completed.

When you close the dialog boxes, you can successfully format the volume or volumes.

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CAUSE

This problem can occur because the mount manager in Microsoft Windows 2000 has an open handle to the volume; therefore, it cannot be locked for formatting purposes.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, first create the volume, and then format it.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

260910 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260910/EN-US/ ) How to Obtain the Latest Windows 2000 Service Pack

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

   Date      Time    Version          Size        File name
-------------------------------------------------------------
12/4/2000    06:18p  2195.3051.297.3  147,728     Dmadmin.exe

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STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.

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MORE INFORMATION

You can use the Disk Management snap-in to mount a local drive on any empty folder on a local NTFS volume. You can format a mounted drive with any file system that is supported by Windows 2000.

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