I need somebody who can explain to me how Windows XP/Vista deal with its file system in the hard disc.

When an application process locks a certain section of a file to prevent other processes from reading/writing on it, updates that section of the file and releases the lock, can I be sure that other processes which have been waiting for the release of the lock find the section of the file updated?  Or is it possible that some of them may read the old data in the section of the file before the update has been completed!!?

 I used to be a Unix C programmer.  I think that I used fcntl() or ioctl() before releasing the lock to make sure that the update has been completed on the file system!!

I look forward to hearing from you guys!!

Chong