Should I dispose a Mutex?

Question

I\'m working on 2 Windows Services that have a common database which I want to lock (cross-process) with a system Mutex.

Now I\'m wondering whether it\'s ok to just

Answer 1

According to this a named Mutex is automatically destroyed when the last process holding a HANDLE of that Mutex ends.

In non-managed terms MSDN says

Use the CloseHandle function to close the handle. The system closes the handle automatically when the process terminates. The mutex object is destroyed when its last handle has been closed.

In .NET you should call .Close() on the Mutex - this releases the HANDLE... since every process gets its own HANDLE when accessing even the same named Mutex this is consistent practice... not calling Close() won't leave any problems behing once the process is no more (finalizers and all)...