The issue is reported to occur on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and on various Windows Server versions.
What causes the process to be used by another process?
We investigated this particular issue by looking at various user reports and the repair strategies that they used to get the issue resolved. Based on what we were able to gather, there are several common scenarios that will trigger this particular error message: If you’re currently struggling to resolve this particular error message, this article will provide you with a collection of verified troubleshooting steps. Down below, you have a collection of methods that other users in a similar situation have used to get the issue resolved. For the best results, follow the methods below in order until you encounter a fix that is effective in resolving the error in your particular scenario. Let’s begin!
Method 1: Running the command with admin privileges
If you’re getting this error when trying to run a netsh command, it’s likely that the error is occurring because you don’t have admin privileges. This is reported to occur more than often when the user tries to run a command that adds exclusions to the dynamic port range for native Windows apps or 3rd party application. Keep in mind that an operation of this kind will require administrator privileges. To ensure that the CMD window you’re trying to perform the action in has admin privileges, follow the steps below: If you’re still getting the “The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process” error or this scenario wasn’t applicable, move down to the next method below.
Method 2: Setting a different IP range
If you’re trying to resolve a conflict DNS conflict using netsh and the method above didn’t help you, you might want to try a different approach. Several users struggling to resolve the same error message have found that the conflict is resolved after they tried to set a completely different IP range instead of creating an exclusion range. Below you have a couple of commands that one affected user successfully ran to resolve a conflict between DNS and Quickbooks: Note: Ensure that the terminal you’re running the command in has admin privileges. If this method didn’t resolve the conflict or wasn’t applicable to the situation that you’re encountering, move down to the final method.
Method 3: Resolving the IIS port conflict
If you are encountering the issue while trying to right-click a website item inside the IIS MMC snap-in (clicking Start doesn’t do anything), you’ll need to use the Netstat.exe utility to figure out if another process is using port 80 and port 443. This issue is quite common with computers running Microsoft IIS 6.0 and 7.0. Based on the official Microsoft documentation, the error message will appear if one of the following conditions are applicable to your current situation:
The ListenOnlyList registry subkey is not configured correctly on the IIS running computer.Another process is using the TCP port (80) or the SSL port (443) required by the IIS.
To resolve this issue, we’ll need to deploy the Netstat.exe utility in order to determine if another process is using the ports specified above. If the utility determines that the ports are not being used, we’ll examine the ListenOnlyList subkey to see if it’s correctly configured. Here’s a step-by-step guide through the whole thing:
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