I've had success with Sysinternals Process Explorer. With this, you can search to find what process(es) have a file open, and you can use it to close the handle(s) if you want. Of course, it is safer to close the whole process. Exercise caution and judgement.
To find a specific file, use the menu option Find->Find Handle or DLL...
Type in part of the path to the file. The list of processes will appear below.
If you prefer command line, Sysinternals suite includes command line tool Handle, that lists open handles.
Examples
c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "e:\"
(finds all files opened from drive e:\
"
c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "file-or-path-in-question"
Here's an article from Microsoft that describes the dynamic DNS process with their DHCP server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787034(WS.10).aspx
The stock behaviour of W2K and up is for the client to request the DHCP server register the PTR record on behalf of the client, and the client registers the A record itself. The DHCP server can be made to register the A record and the PTR record (including for pre-Windows 2000 clients that can't make DDNS registrations themselves).
There is an optional setting to have the DHCP server delete the A and PTR records when a lease is discarded. If the lease hasn't time-out, though, the records won't be deleted.
You absolutely should be aging and scavenging your DDNS zones. If you're aging and scavenging, this will eventually "purge". If you're not, it won't.
This Microsoft support article explains how to set the TTL value for DNS resource records registered by DHCP servers (originally in a hotfix, now just built-in to the OS): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322989
To alter the behaviour of client computers in DNS registrations, have a look in Group Policy in the DNS Client node under the Network subnode of the Administrative Templates node of the Computer Configuration. In there, you'll find that you can force the clients to register their PTR records, rather than having it done by the DHCP server (if you so desire), and you can set the TTL on records registered by clients.
I'm not sure why this would suddenly start occurring. Some configuration had to change, but I'm at a loss as to tell you where. Start talking to your co-admins about any changes they might've made in the DHCP server configuration or in the group policy settings for clients' dynamic DNS behaviour.
I can't say I've seen the behaviour of multiple clients registering the same PTR record. That's odd. I'll have to defer to someone else on that. I will say that all of my reverse-zones are always AD integrated and require secure updates, but I don't know that that would have an effect on this.
In my experience, just having aging and scavenging turned on makes a world of difference in eliminating stale records. The default 7 day interval has worked well for me.
Best Answer
Server 2012 R2 comes with a DHCP failover built-in so you don't need to use a failover cluster or do split scoping. As far as I know, this isn't possible with a mixed Linux/Windows DHCP setup.