Other objects are useful in protecting shared resources from simultaneous access. For example, multiple threads can each have a handle to a mutex object. Before accessing a shared resource, the threads must call one of the wait functions to wait for the state of the mutex to be signaled. When the mutex becomes signaled, only one waiting thread is released to access the resource. The state of the mutex is immediately reset to not signaled so any other waiting threads remain blocked. When the thread is finished with the resource, it must set the state of the mutex to signaled to allow other threads to access the resource.