anonymous wrote : so there is a magic flag, after all? There is a flag, but it's not magic :) I've spent a lot of time on this lately. A general rule that works for file: urls (but not for jar:file: urls) is the following: | URLConnection conn = fileUrl.openConnection(); | InputStream in = conn.getInputStream(); | long lastModified; | try | { | lastModified = conn.getLastModified(); | System.out.println("lastModified, "+lastModified); | } | finally | { | in.close(); | } | It's getting and closing the InputStream that does the trick. For jar:file: urls I could only achieve file lock release by triggering finalizers - which means it's pretty useless for anything but tests maybe: | URLConnection conn = jarFileUrl.openConnection(); | conn.setUseCaches(false); | | long lastModified = conn.getLastModified(); | | conn = null; | jarFileUrl = null; | System.gc(); | Thread.sleep(500); | System.gc(); | In this case I'd say the problem is more with JDK implementation than Windows :) - marko View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4161584#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...