be used to refer to any such files in conventional systems there are different types of file locks in use currently such as read locks and write locks when a process accesses a data file it may create a read lock which prevents other processes from reading or writing that file this prevents alteration of the data while the process reads and or writes it and prevents a new process from reading the data file while the current process is not yet finished with it when the read operation is over the lock file i e the file reflecting the read lock is removed so other processes can now read the data file another type of lock is a write lock which is a lock file that prevents a newly requesting process from writing to the data file in question but does not prevent the new process from reading the data file this can prevent the new process from corrupting the data being read by a currently accessing process the present invention is useful in connection with either read locks or write locks and other types of locks that may be used referring to fig3 a method 200 is illustrated which can be implemented by execution of program steps on one or more processors such as processors 12 22 32 and 102 certain segments of the method may be controlled by different program modules executed on different processors as will be seen below for instance as shown in fig4 a memory 400 which may be any one of the memories 14 24 34 104 stores both a list of currently active lock files 410 and program modules 420 440 for respectively creating locks resetting the lock timer and refreshing the locks.