w3wp has handle on download files

Question

I set up iis to handle .exe with "asp.net 2.0"s isapi filter to enable dynamic url replacement. For this I setup the extension in iis and added the following line to web.config. Works fine so far.

<add path="*.exe" verb="*" type="System.Web.StaticFileHandler" />

the problem is that form that point w3wp process has several handles on these files. Most likely because someone is downloading them at the moment.

Is there a way to tell iis/asp.net not to put a exclusive handle on the file? I want to replace them even if the site is running. This works as long as asp.net does not handle these files.

Answer 1

I don't think there is a way to do this. You are telling IIS to handle this filetype, so the server is assuming a certain exclusivity. This behavior is intended IMO, because it prevents corrupted files in production environment.

Maybe it helps to limit the requests to some selected HTTP verbs (POST/GET), but i don't see any other options.

And the other question is: why do you want to replace a file, that is currently downloaded by a user? It will corrupt his download, forcing him to start all over again.