“If the digital revolution is to rival the Industrial Revolution in significance, it will require a lot more than technology. It will require investment, patience and entrepreneurs who care more about building something of value than trying to make a quick buck. One management lesson…seems to be that…a promising technology often takes time to percolate through trial, error and refinement before it comes to fruition.”

—Steve Lohr, NYTimes.com

The Internet has grown from its infancy into a white-paper forum where just about every website demands (is that too harsh?) your subscription in order that you might leave a comment or post some important information. But the more common complaint by users across the Web has been the error code:

“THE REQUESTED OPERATION CANNOT BE PERFORMED ON A FILE WITH A USER-MAPPED SECTION OPEN.”

Begging to be an annoyance, what “user-mapped section open” actually means—besides poor grammar and sounding like gobbledygook—is that a mapped network drive or “pipe” where an “open” shared resource (file or folder) is being used (by one or more accounts)  and has reached its maximum number of users for one session. How many users are allowed during an open session on this mapped network drive is anyone’s guess.

Should you run HIGHJACK THIS™ from trendsecure.com to view the log and post the content there before running Process Explorer from sysinternals.com and post the contents of the saved process list in a .txt file?

A simpler solution might be to return to the network and correct this problem there.

But what to do if the problem still persists, let’s say, in locking you out of making changes to all other files in your folder, or stalling the process when you do downloads, or whatever?

This “glitch” (Can we call it that?) could very well qualify as a non-reoccurring phenomenon, more commonly known as an anomaly. It’s my opinion that the glitch itself is the result of some form of “phantom” fragmentation, which insurmountably results during or following the download process.

Okay, without any of that high-tech hocus-pocus and techie mumbo-jumbo, I found what may be not the solution to this error but at least an effective workaround. Not long ago, every document on my flash drive (thankfully, not the hard drive) prompted this infamous error code with every attempt to Ctrl+Save.

Not knowing if my flash drive had been corrupted, here’s what I did….

a) Exported all content from the flash drive to a .txt file on the C Drive. [Use any alternate drive rather than back up the files on the volume itself.]

b) Checked for volume errors on the drive.

c) Scanned the volume space on the drive.

d) Initiated “defragmentation” to compact space/impede the return of any fragmentation that may have occurred on the drive.

e) Altered the file system on the drive from FAT to FAT32; this being optional (and a sign of my paranoia).

f) Reformatted the drive.

Some of these steps seem unnecessary or even redundant, I know, but collectively (or inclusively) they worked perfectly for me. Regardless, I hope this can be of somehow help.

Naturally, solving my problem is not a real solution to the problem. But my guess is that when this “phenomenon” infected ALL FILES on my flash drive—leaving me incapable of saving any changes to any documents and images—some form of virus must have taken hold, either from downloading a “shared open file” or a secured file on the network.

Using a different sector of your hard drive or deploying a “Force Start” if the download suspends is not a hot fix. Just because you click Force Start does not mean the download will continue until finished; too often it will prompt this error code so many times that you will have to do some babysitting.

As I mentioned, my experience involved only my flash drive, and what I offer here is merely a workaround. If anyone has a better answer to this question about “user-mapped section open” please write me at frederick@dreamerchant.com and I will post your findings here on Dot.Com.

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