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I'm using premake5 here.
It generates my solution/project files, when this happens, VS2015 asks me if I want to reload the modified projects.
If I hit yes, this proceeds to lock up the IDE for a very long time.
Anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute I'd say.
Does anyone know of a way to work around this? This is super irritating.
It happens even for the most trivial of changes(modify one project, which only has 1 file in it).
I realize this is a VS problem, and not directly the fault of premake/cmake(or whatever build system you are using), but it totally sucks.
As you said, it's VS related :) But I think you have some problems with your installation : for small projects, reloading the whole solutions should be pretty fast : my personal projects take less than a second to reload (2 to 4 projects per solution, ~100 files per project)
Anyway in the usual course of development, re-generating your projects should not happen that often, except at the very beginning when you need to configure everything.
When you need to add a few files, just add them through Visual Studio : you won't have to run Premake again, and next time you run it, the files will be included by your script anyway. You can do the same with small configuration changes : update your project directly in VS, check that it works, and when it does, upadte the Premake script. You won't have to run Premake then.
When I debug my project, I get following error:
"Unable to copy file "obj\Debug\My Dream.exe" to "bin\Debug\My Dream.exe". The process cannot access the file 'bin\Debug\My Dream.exe' because it is being used by another process."
Using Process Explorer, I see that MyApplication.exe was out but System process still uses it although I stopped debug before.
Whenever I change my code and start debug it is going to happen. If I copy project to USB and debug, it runs OK.
Why? How can I fix this error?
I use Window 7 Professional. With Xp I have never got this error.
Ugh, this is an old problem, something that still pops up in Visual Studio once in a while. It's bitten me a couple of times and I've lost hours restarting and fighting with VS. I'm sure it's been discussed here on SO more than once. It's also been talked about on the MSDN forums. There isn't an actual solution, but there are a couple of workarounds. Start researching here.
What's happening is that VS is acquiring a lock on a file and then not releasing it. Ironically, that lock prevents VS itself from deleting the file so that it can recreate it when you rebuild the application. The only apparent solution is to close and restart VS so that it will release the lock on the file.
My original workaround was opening up the bin/Debug folder and renaming the executable. You can't delete it if it's locked, but you can rename it. So you can just add a number to the end or something, which allows you to keep working without having to close all of your windows and wait for VS to restart. Some people have even automated this using a pre-build event to append a random string to the end of the old output filename. Yes, this is a giant hack, but this problem gets so frustrating and debilitating that you'll do anything.
I've later learned, after a bit more experimentation, that the problem seems to only crop up when you build the project with one of the designers open. So, the solution that has worked for me long term and prevented me from ever dealing with one of those silly errors again is making sure that I always close all designer windows before building a WinForms project. Yes, this too is somewhat inconvenient, but it sure beats the pants off having to restart VS twice an hour or more.
I assume this applies to WPF, too, although I don't use it and haven't personally experienced the problem there.
I also haven't yet tried reproducing it on VS 2012 RC. I don't know if it's been fixed there yet or not. But my experience so far has been that it still manages to pop up even after Microsoft has claimed to have fixed it. It's still there in VS 2010 SP1. I'm not saying their programmers are idiots who don't know what they're doing, of course. I figure there are just multiple causes for the bug and/or that it's very difficult to reproduce reliably in a laboratory. That's the same reason I haven't personally filed any bug reports on it (although I've +1'ed other peoples), because I can't seem to reliably reproduce it, rather like the Abominable Snowman.
<end rant that is directed at no one in particular>
I've had this error crop up on me before, even in Visual Studio 2008. It came back and more prevalent in Visual Studio 2012.
Here is what I do.
Paste this in the troublesome project's pre-build event:
if exist "$(TargetPath).locked" del "$(TargetPath).locked"
if exist "$(TargetPath)" if not exist "$(TargetPath).locked" move "$(TargetPath)" "$(TargetPath).locked"
Computer (right-click) -> manage -> Service & Application -> service -> Enable Application experience
Worked For me!
I had the same issue in Visual Studio 2013. I'm not sure what caused this for my project, but I was able to fix it by cleaning the solution and rebuilding it.
Build > Clean Solution
Build > Rebuild Solution
I understand this is an old question. Unfortunately I was facing the same issue with my .net core 2.0 application in visual studio 2017. So, I thought of sharing the solution which worked for me. Before this solution I had tried the below steps.
Restarted visual studio
Closed all the application
Clean my solution and rebuild
None of the above steps didn't fix the issue.
And then I opened my Task Manager and selected dotnet process and then clicked End task button. Later I opened my Visual Studio and everything was working fine.
At least in my case I've noticed that visual studio 2012 was creating at least two msbuild.exe ghost processes, which did not perish after build. These zombies apparently are causing file locks to appear.
Killing msbuild.exe's is one time solution, it needs to be done per build basis.
But then I've figure out that I could disable parallel build once and for all - went into Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run > "maximum numbers of parallel project builds" - by default it has value of 8, I've switched to 1. Works like charm.
Of course builds are bit slower now, but better safe than sorry.
At least for this particular small project I did not need more than one build thread.
See my answer here if you're having this problem while running unit tests. Answer copied below:
Building upon Sébastien's answer, I added a pre-build step to my test
project to automatically kill any vstest.* executables still
running. The following pre-build command worked for me:
taskkill /f /im vstest.*
exit 0
The exit 0 command is at the end to prevent build failure when there
are no vstest.* executables running.
I solved this problem..
near the debug you see drop down menu with some configuration. Default there was Any CPU. Select x86 and run the program it will work. If x86 not there go to configuration manager and add the x86
Recently I've been in a trouble with Visual Studio 2012 with same error description: "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process..."
To fix this first of all you need to understand the application which still use it. I've shutdown all processes like "MSBuild" and "MSBuild host". But this is not enough. If you have installed "Code Contracts" and turned on then it sometimes takes your DLLs for checking and hanging up on this operation.
So, you need to stop all processes of "CCCheck.exe" and that's all.
Finally, to understand that process is using your DLL you always may try to just Delete "obj" folder in your File Manager and this operation will fail, you may see the "Message Window" with description of the hanging operation. Also, as a variant, you can try to use "Sys Internals Suite" application.
Worked for me.
Task Manager -> Name of project -> End task. (i had 3 same processes with my project name);
VS 2013; Win 8;
Make sure that any previous run of the application (for example, start without debugging option) is actually stopped. I was working on a WPF application, started without debugging and had it minimized when I kept getting the error. After closing the application VS behavior got back to normal.
I have been plagued by this issue in Visual Studio 2017. It started about two or three weeks ago, and has severely eaten into my productivity. Clean and Rebulid haven't worked; even restarting my machine doesn't do the job.
One way to deal with the issue is to clean the offending assembly, and to build (as opposed to rebuild) the project you want to run immediately afterwards. This works about 30% of the time.
However, probably the most reliable solution I've found is to open a Developer Command Prompt, and use msbuild directly. I've been doing this for the last three days, and so far the problem hasn't happened once.
In my case was that I have enable "Show All Files".
Visual Studio 2017
Run taskmanager.
Locate netcore and delete it.
You can then delete the file manually or by running Clean.
This is pure speculation, and not an answer.
However, I have been having this problem for a while.
I came after a time to suspect an interaction between VS and my AV precautions.
After some playing, it seems that it may have gone away when I modified my antivirus so that everything under the
C:\Users[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ProjectAssemblies
folder was not included in the real-time protection.
It looks as if the build actually writes the DLL here first, then copies it to the final build location.
It could be too late. But, I encountered similar problem and in my case the project had self reference. Hence, deleting it from the References worked like a charm!!!
I've found the quickest way without closing forms or restarting VisualStudio is go to the project's compile page and click "Advanced Compile Options..." button. Then make any change to one of the options (say, changing Generate Debug Info from Full to pdb-only), then click OK.
It works every time and will have to do until MS fixes this bug (I've never had this problem until I switched from VS2012 to VS2013)
Another note, if you can't clean the project or solution, it won't build. The files are definitely locked by VS (not a antivirus problem, at least not in my case)
I tried all these suggestions as well as other suggestions found elsewhere and the only thing that worked for me was restarting my computer. Then I did a clean solution followed by rebuilding. I am using Visual Studio 2013 for reference.
I have run to this same issue, and what I found is there are actually running mulitple Windows form application in the background. It happens when your application has two forms and you close the 2nd form which is not your main form so the application will not totally exited.
I usually run my application
through its exe or
run without debugging
Solution is close the other instance of Windows form application.
This is one way to always close your application instance.
Pre build command
(if exist "$(TargetDir)*old.pdb" del "$(TargetDir)*old.pdb") & (if exist "$(TargetDir)*.pdb" ren "$(TargetDir)*.pdb" *.old.pdb)
Helped
[Solved] Error: Cannot access file bin/Debug/… because it is being used by another process:
I am approaching that you get this error while you was trying to run two windows form one after another such as first loading a form then after sometimes it will automatically disappear and the second form loaded onto the screen.
Basically, you need to close your first form which is running in the background and the main reason behind this error.
To close the first form you have to add these two lines of code in the second form load event handler.
Form1 form = new Form1();
form.Close();
This will solve the error perfectly.
One simple solution is you go to bin\Debug folder, delete all the files in that folder, then rebuild. If it doesn't work, close Visual Studio then go to bin\Debug folder using file explorer, on the left coner, click on File> Open Command Prompt> Open Command Prompt as Administrator > Enter this command "DEL /F /Q /A *" > then rebuild
i found Cody Gray 's answer partially helpful, in that it did direct me to the real source of my problem which some of you may also be experiencing: visual studio's test execution stays open by default and maintains a lock on the files.
To stop that predominantly useless behaviour, follow the instructions from https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/771994/vstest-executionengine-x86-exe-32-bit-not-closing-vs2012-11-0-50727-1-rtmrel
Uncheck Test menu -> Test Settings -> "Keep Test Execution Engine Running"
My problem was dotnet got hung up and whenever VS would try to make a new dll, or access an old one, the dotnet process would latch onto the dll and stop visual studio from cloning the dll. Solution is just to end all dotnet tasks in task manager(it will only actually remove the dead one, if you are trying to end one and it won't shut down, that means it's working).
Close VisualStudio, ctrl-alt-delete, select Task Manager, find and end all MSBuild processes - VisualStudio basically has a pretty severe bug where it loses control of its debugger and the debugger maintains a lock on the .pdb file in the debug/bin folder. After you end all the MSBuild (debugger) processes, delete the /debug/bin folder and reopen your solution in Visual Studio. You're good to go now. Microsoft needs to fix this crap.
I have opened a separate question regarding VS 2017 that had a similar behavior after one update. The problem seemed to be generated by the antivirus program although.
I have added the bin folder to the antivirus exclude list, restarted the machine and now it seems to work.
I have faced the same issue, but none of the answers above helped me! I just simply closed my Visual Studio 2017 then re-run it, and It worked!
I've tried every answered here and this worked for me
Close your Project.
Stop running tasks in task manager
Restart your pc
Open and build project again
it worked for me.
I got this error because I was running my solution, but not in debug mode. I had forgotten this. I realized it and stopped my solution from running. This cleared up the issue.
Another kludge, ugh, but it's easy and works for me in VS 2013. Click on the project. In the properties panel should be an entry named Project File with a value
(your project name).vbproj
Change the project name - such as adding an -01 to the end. The original .zip file that was locked is still there, but no longer referenced ... so your work can continue. Next time the computer is rebooted, that lock disappears and you can delete the errant file.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Visual Studio keeps building everything
Visual Studio 2008 keeps rebuilding the entire project as if every implementation file was modified. This happens even if no files were modified. Hit build button twice in row, and the entire projects gets rebuild twice. This doesn't happens on another box. The OS is Windows Vista.
This is very annoying. What could cause such a behavior?
It is a C++ project.
Some ideas to try...
As #David Paxson said in the comments, with some languauges (e.g. C#, VB) all the projects will appear to be "built", but the compiler will skip through the ones that don't need to be built much more quickly, even though they are still listed in the output. So it may simply appear to be rebuilding everything. Also, with C#, Visual Studio sometimes runs the project several times in a row, and sometimes it will decide for no obvious reason that it needs to "rebuild" the projects, but this only usually takes a few seconds extra unless you have hundreds of projects.
Restart Visual Studio (or even reboot the PC entirely).
Do a "Rebuild All" of the entire solution to clean out any old cached information and ensure all the output files are up to date.
If you use source control, then even better is to check in all of your changes, then delete your old source code folder (or safer, rename it somewhere out of the way until you know you don't need it) and force-get all the latest source code from source control again. This means you have a totally clean starting point (a clean or rebuild-all doesn't quite clean everything away, unfortunately). I do this every 2-4 weeks to keep everything running smoothly and totally in sync with the Source Control code.
If anything modifies the datestamps of any files in your build, then this could trigger a "need" to rebuild everything. Check that your system clock is set correctly, that there aren't any datestamps of source files set to times "in the future", and there are no applications running that could possibly "touch" any of your source files.
Check this option: Tools->Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run : "Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run". If it is unchecked, then VS will try to rebuild all projects every time, rather than only the dependencies of the startup project. If you have a large solution with a bunch of mostly unrelated projects in it, this is a very helpful option to set.
If there are projects that you don't need to build every time, then use the Configuration Manager to disable building of those projects in your current build (or create a "Debug Fast Build" configuration so you can switch quickly between a full rebuild and a partial build). Or move projects that don't need to be built often into a separate "libraries" solution and reference/link the output files (obj or dll) form your application's Solution, so the libraries only need to be rebuilt if you edit their code.
Lastly, make sure you're doing a "Build" and not a "Rebuild" :-)
Using Visual Studio 2010, when I build + run my application in short intervals I often get the following error. If I just wait a minute or two and try again it works fine. Unlocker claims no handle is locking the executable file. How can I discover what's locking it? If it's Visual Studio itself, what should I do to make it stop? or alternatively to release the file?
1>------ Build started: Project: MyProj, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
...
1>InitializeBuildStatus:
1> Creating "Release\MyProj.unsuccessfulbuild" because "AlwaysCreate" was specified.
1>ClCompile:
1> All outputs are up-to-date.
1> SomeFile1.cpp
1>ResourceCompile:
1> All outputs are up-to-date.
1>LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'D:\...\MyProj.exe'
1>
1>Build FAILED.
1>
1>Time Elapsed 00:00:00.94
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
Had this issue after a reinstall today. Make sure the Application Experience service is started and not set to disabled. If its set to manual, I believe VS will start it.
I'm aware this is quite old but I just had the same problem with Visual Studio 2010 all patched up so others may still run into this.
Adding my project path to "Exluded Items" in my AVG anti-virus settings appears to have fixed the problem for me.
Try disabling any anti-virus/resident shield and see if it fixes the problem. If so, add your project path to excluded directories in your AV config.
You probably had a stray build process that was locking the executable, and it (the stray process) didn't get cleaned up. In that case, shut down visual studio, open up process explorer, and nuke every process you can find that is related to visual studio.
Then open up visual studio again and try rebuilding your project.
the file can be locked because it is being run now. Try killing the process with a task manager.
Like Jonathan said, yes, renaming can help to work around this problem. But ,e.g. I was forced to rename target executable many times, it's some tedious and not good.
The problem lies there that when you run your project and later get an error that you can't build your project - it's so because this executable (your project) is still runnning (you can check it via task manager.)
If you just rename target build, some time later you will get the same error with new name too and if you open a task manager, you will see that you rubbish system with your not finished projects.
Visual studio for making a new build need to remove previous executable and create new instead of old, it can't do it while executable is still runinng. So, if you want to make a new build, process of old executable has to be closed! (it's strange that visual studio doesn't close it by itself and yes, it looks like some buggy behaviour).
It's some tedious to do it manually, so you may just a bat file and just click it when you have such problem:
taskkill /f /im name_of_target_executable.exe
it works for me at least.
Like a guess - I don't close my program properly in C++, so may be it's normal for visual studio to hold it running.
ADDITION:
There is a great chance to be so , because of not finished application. Check whether you called PostQuitMessage in the end, in order to give know Windows that you are done.
You might have not closed the the output. Close the output, clean and rebuild the file. You might be able to run the file now.
I've concluded this is some kind of Visual Studio bug. Perhaps C Johnson is right - perhaps the build process keeps the file locked.
I do have a workaround which works - each time this happens - I change the Target Name of the executable under the Project's properties (right click the project, then Properties\Configuration Properties\General\Target Name).
In this fashion VS creates a new executable and the problem is worked around. Every few times I do this I return to the original name, thus cycling through ~3 names.
If someone will find the reason for this and a solution, please do answer and I may move the answer to yours, as mine is a workaround.
I had the same problem, however using Codeblocks. Because of this problem i quited programming because everytime i just wanted to throw my computer out of the window.
I want to thank user963228 whos answer is really a solution to that. You have to put Application Experience on Manual startup(you can do it by searching services in windows 7 start menu, and then find Application Experience and click properties).
This problem happens when people want to tweak theyr windows 7 machine, and they decide to disable some pointless services, so they google some tweaking guide and most of those guides say that Application Experience is safe to disable.
I think this problem should be linked to windows 7 problem not VS problem and it should be more visible - it took me long time to find this solution.
Thanks again!
Just to add another solution to the list, what I've found is that Visual Studio (2012 in my case) occasionally locks files under different processes.
So, on a crash, devenv.exe might still be running and holding onto the file(s). Alternatively (as I just discovered), vstestrunner or vstestdiscovery might be holding onto the file as well.
Kill all those processes and it might fix up the issue.
I have just run into the same issue with VS2013, creating device drivers in C++ , and none of the above seemed to fix the issue. However, I have just discovered that in my case the issue appears to have been VMWare-related.
I was running a VMWare workstation client with a shared folder defined on the VM on my entire C: drive. When I disabled the shared folders on the VM Settings, VS2013 was able to happily build my .exe files.
My new process is:
1) Disable the shared folder on the vm (VM Settings | Options | Shared Folders - and uncheck the checkbox)
2) Run the build on the host PC
3) RE-enable the shared folder (and proceed from there)
Hopefully this might help someone else.
(BTW, the errors you receive are that the .exe (or other files) are locked or require Administrator permission, but that is a red herring - It seems to me that the VMWare share is causing those files to appear as locked.)
Usually, this means that your program is locked and might not be killed through task manager or process explorer. I met a similar case that my program had an exception during running and triggered the windows error reporting which locked the program. For the case that windows error reporting locks the program, you can go to control panel->System and Security->Action Center->Problem Reporting Settings to set "Never check for solutions". Hope it helps.
For me it was happening, when I was trying to build in debug mode, but it was working fine in release mode. I changed the build configuration in the visual studio from x86 to x64 and it worked fine for me, as I was running on 64 bit system.
I just had this issue in VS22 - I think I closed the debugger right when it was compiling. All I had to do was restart my computer.
The error comes (at least sometimes) from paths that are too long. In my project simply reducing the output file path does the job:
"Properties/Configuration Properties/General/Intermediate Directory"
Seems that I have hit the 250 character path limitation.
Working with Bjarne Stroustrup Programming Principles and Practice Using C++ "FLTK" example i got the same error but after like 1 hour i got an idea, i tracked one of the libs already seen in Project Properties -> Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies, in my case i tracked the kernel32.lib to see where was located and saw there were many kernel32.lib's in different folders. So i started copy the FLTK libs in those folders and the last one i tried worked. Visual Studio 2013 Express found the fltkd.lib and the code worked.
In my case the correct route was C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Lib\winv6.3\um\x86
I don't know how to set that route inside Visual Studio.
Not sure if that Windows kits folder was created when i installed Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 (ISO) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8442
Hope that helps you people.
I just had thesame problem. With me the exe was still running but I could not end it with the Task Manager. Just by restarting VS, it worked for me.
Mine is that if you set MASM listing file option some extra selection, it will give you this error.
Just use
Enable Assembler Generated Code Listing Yes/Sg
Assembled Code Listing $(ProjectName).lst
it is fine.
But any extra you have issue.
I have a couple of VS 2008 projects (C++) that are linked every time I start a build, even though nothing has changed. i.e. I select "Build Solution", it compiles and links, I select "Build Solution" again, it doesn't compile anything, but links again.
This is quite annoying and I have checked everything that might cause it to link again.
Is there a way to find out why Visual Studio does or skips certain build steps?
Any input is appreciated!
I had some time to revisit the problem and a workmate gave me the tip to use "process monitor" from sysinternals to figure out which file is missing.
Lo and behold it worked! It turns out that Visual Studio insists on linking against a bunch of libs even if the app does not need it. Due to an unfortunate (I guess...) chain of events, one of the default library paths disappeared from Visual Studios global settings, so VS couldn't find this lib anymore ("coredll.lib" in my case).
This didn't affect the final output, because this lib is not needed at all, but it still triggered a relink every time.
There are two possible fixes:
1) Restore the path to this lib in the global Visual Studio settings
2) Use "$(NoInherit)" in AdditionalLibraries to get rid of the unneeded lib.
I used solution #1, because #2 needs to be done for each configuration of each project because can't be done via Property Sheets.
Rebuilding can be caused also by non-existing and unused .h files belonging to the project. Since they are unused, there's no warning nor error about missing files.
Using "Process Monitor" by Sysinternals as mentioned earlier was a great hint towards figuring out the reason.
Bit of a long shot but check the date/time stamp on any dependent DLLs you have. If they are in the future then a rebuild will occur.
Edit: Also have you tried opening the .vcproj files up in an editor to check if anything's unusual? You could also try recreating them from scratch, if that's possible.