See below .LCK file cannot be opened

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>If you want a filename or directory with spaces, just enclose the entire
>name with quotes ("This is my file").
>
>Ampersands (&) are a reserved system character, and so shouldn't be used.
>  
>
The problem  is an "operating system" issue. Some of the stuff used by 
gnucash assumes that "&" is a special character because it in in the 
'nix operating systems where these components came from (but it is a 
legal character in a Windows name). That's a problem I ran into when I 
first began using gnucash many years ago. The gnucash team can't fix 
this problem as they don't "own" the components involved. Folks need to 
realize that many (most?) of the people developing free software aren't 
Windows users.

The .LCK file isn't intended to be opened. If you need an explanation it 
is a very simple way to prevent disallowed "sharing" of a resource. 
There are other methods, but this one works because having exclusive 
rights to a file does not prevent others from checking for the existence 
of that file (the first "user" opening gnucash "owns" this file; if 
others try to open gnucash they find that the file already exists and so 
aren't allowed into that "profile" ---- if your system crashes while 
gnucash was open this file may have gotten left behind and you may need 
to delete it manually* to "unlock" the data. That's no gnucash specific 
advice as this method of using a "lock" file is common).

Michael

* This is NOT some flaw/defect. This sort of database locks exist even 
in major systems only there you as user don't have to do the post crash 
unlocking, some tech support person does it for you when bringing the 
system back up. Multiple user databases (multiple concurrent users) have 
a "database manager" program managing the accesses to the database for 
all users. That's a major project all in itself and why projects like 
gnucash are "single user" (single in the sense of "one at a time").