Research on locked resources

I am keep looking at how to stop service, drivers and applications to release resources (file, database) to make backup & restore process more smoothly.

This post is a note of the testing result, it will keep updating when anything was found.

SERVICES

Using PocketCMD and services.exe command line interface to stop ( unload) and re-start the service. Check if any resource has been release when service stopped, and check if the service can be re-start normally without restart the device.

	Stoppable	Re-start	Resources
DTPT (dtpt_srv.dll)	OK (system lock for a long-time when unload the service)	OK	(none)
NOTIFY (NOTIFY.dll)	OK	OK	mxip_notify.vol
SWMGMTSERVICE (swmgmtservice.dll)	OK	OK	mxip_swmgmt.vol

I still think ActiveSync should be one of the service, but I cannot find it until now. So, keep searching.

APPLICATIONS

Using remote process tool in VS2008 to force delete process of a application. Check if any resource has been release when process stopped.

	Resources	Notes
tmail.exe	(none)	UI 上的「訊息中心」, of course can be start again after delete process.
poutlook.exe	(none)	After kill both tmail.exe and poutlook.exe, the cemail.vol still cannot be release.
repllog.exe	(none)	Although this process was be named as “ActiveSync”, but I don’t see any issue after killing this process in remote tool. And this process will be start again when you try to doing something on your PC through ActiveSync.
rapiclnt.exe	mxip_system.vol mxip_language.vol	The process name is “Remote API Client”. After the process has been killed, all remote tasks are dead. If we design a backup tool without remote access, it should be fine.

Stop remote API client can release mxip_system.vol and mxip_language.vol, but maybe you need to restart the device.

The most thing depressed me is that I cannot release cemail.vol through stopping poutlook.exe and tmail.exe. That means the way to backup and restore mail database is either using special APIs like POOM or I need to put the backup and restore process in boot up sequence.