Reputation: 32162

Visual Studio "Could not copy" .... during build

I keep getting this error during the build of my VS2012 C# project

Error   41  Could not copy "obj\Debug\WeinGartner.WeinCad.exe" to
 "bin\Debug\WeinGartner.WeinCad.exe". 
 Exceeded retry count of 10. Failed.    


Error   42  Unable to copy file "obj\Debug\WeinGartner.WeinCad.exe" to
"bin\Debug\WeinGartner.WeinCad.exe". The process cannot access the file
'bin\Debug\WeinGartner.WeinCad.exe' because it is being used by another 
process.

Now I've figured out that killing the process

Weingartner.WeinCad.vhost.exe

works (sometimes ) but this is getting on my nerves. Any way to stop this happening at all?

My debugger settings are

enter image description here

Upvotes: 456

Answers (30)

Harsha

Reputation: 79

Close the Visual Studio application correctly by using task manager or any way. Then re-run Visual Studio and try building and running. That solved my issue. This is happening due to crashing of Visual Studio.

Upvotes: 0

sprash

Reputation: 345

Run the below command in command prompt and close the process that is consuming the exe.

taskkill /PID [your-process-id] /F

Note: Process-id can be found in the VS error description

I noticed this issue is happening when the Powershell window (that opens after you press run button in VS) is not closed before you run the solution next time. So, generally we can prevent this issue by ensuring that Powershell window remains closed before re-running.

Upvotes: 1

Techgeekster

Reputation: 89

After trying the top 10 answers I then restarted my computer to make sure no other processes were running as that seemed to be recurring theme here. I still had the issue.

Then my co-worker mentioned that on our mac users add the json file which happened to have a long name. We thought the issue could be windows and the not having longPaths enabled.

I enabled long paths in the registry and my build started working again.

To enable long paths on windows. Open regedit, navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem then set the value of LongPathsEnabled to 1.

I hope this helps someone.

Upvotes: 0

Divan

Reputation: 402

In my case I had an instance of Azure Data Studio that was accessing the .dll as part of a deployment operation.

Always check that there is nothing using the file that you are trying to replace.

Upvotes: 0

Ogglas

Reputation: 69968

Killing the process w3wp.exe (IIS) will often solve this.
Generally, you can know the process that has the lock on the file by navigating to the bin folder and trying to delete it. The error message that will pop up, in case another process is using it, will contain the name of the process that needs to be killed.

Using Blazor and Fluent UI Web Components I got the errors below on publish:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fluent-ui/web-components/integrations/blazor

C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\6.0.402\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor.StaticWebAssets.targets(615,5): Warning MSB3026: Could not copy "C:\Users\oscar.nuget\packages\microsoft.fast.components.fluentui\1.5.3\staticwebassets\icons\TextDirectionRotate270Right\en\text_direction_rotate_270_right_24_regular.svg" to "C:\Users\oscar\source\repos\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\Server\obj\Release\net6.0\PubTmp\Out\wwwroot_content\Microsoft.Fast.Components.FluentUI\icons\TextDirectionRotate270Right\en\text_direction_rotate_270_right_24_regular.svg". Beginning retry 10 in 1000ms. Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users\oscar\source\repos\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\Server\obj\Release\net6.0\PubTmp\Out\wwwroot_content\Microsoft.Fast.Components.FluentUI\icons\TextDirectionRotate270Right\en\text_direction_rotate_270_right_24_regular.svg'. C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\6.0.402\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor.StaticWebAssets.targets(615,5): Warning MSB3026: Could not copy "C:\Users\oscar.nuget\packages\microsoft.fast.components.fluentui\1.5.3\staticwebassets\icons\TextDirectionRotate270Right\en\text_direction_rotate_270_right_20_regular.svg" to "C:\Users\oscar\source\repos\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\Server\obj\Release\net6.0\PubTmp\Out\wwwroot_content\Microsoft.Fast.Components.FluentUI\icons\TextDirectionRotate270Right\en\text_direction_rotate_270_right_20_regular.svg". Beginning retry 10 in 1000ms. Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users\oscar\source\repos\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\Server\obj\Release\net6.0\PubTmp\Out\wwwroot_content\Microsoft.Fast.Components.FluentUI\icons\TextDirectionRotate270Right\en\text_direction_rotate_270_right_20_regular.svg'. C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\6.0.402\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor.StaticWebAssets.targets(615,5): Error MSB3027: Could not copy "C:\Users\oscar.nuget\packages\microsoft.fast.components.fluentui\1.5.3\staticwebassets\icons\TextDirectionHorizontalRight\ko\text_direction_horizontal_right_24_regular.svg" to "C:\Users\oscar\source\repos\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\Server\obj\Release\net6.0\PubTmp\Out\wwwroot_content\Microsoft.Fast.Components.FluentUI\icons\TextDirectionHorizontalRight\ko\text_direction_horizontal_right_24_regular.svg". Exceeded retry count of 10. Failed.

Looking at

C:\Users\oscar\source\repos\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\Server\obj\Release\net6.0\PubTmp\Out\wwwroot\_content\Microsoft.Fast.Components.FluentUI\icons\TextDirectionHorizontalRight\ko\text_direction_horizontal_right_24_regular.svg

It is 261 characters long.

I then tried to Enable Long Paths and reboot my computer.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation?tabs=registry

This did not work and I got the same error. I then moved my project to C:\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\ instead of C:\Users\oscar\source\repos\MyVeryLongProjectName12345678\. After doing this everything worked out.

Upvotes: 9

pear95

Reputation: 66

The first message error solution:

In my case, the problem was with the path length.

The solution is to reduce/change the problem file path. If the problem is with a file inside your project, you should reduce/change the repository path from e.g.

C:\Users\userTest\folder1\folder2\folder3\...\folderX\myProject\...\file.exe

to e.g.

C:\Users\userTest\folder1\myProject\...\file.exe

In others words by default the path length can't be upper than 260 characters.

Original thread answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/73686473/12678101)

Upvotes: 0

sorma Gupta

Reputation: 127

Press Cntrl+alt+Delete then go to resource monitor and select your exe name under CPU tab, right click and kill that process.

Upvotes: 0

Rushi Daxini

Reputation: 1700

It's because you have closed your application, but it's still running in background.

Temporary solution:

Go to Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc).
Go to Processes tab and find "YourProjectName.exe".
Check "Show processes from all users" if you can't find your process.
End Process it.

Permanent solution: you have to close your application through coding. Here is the code...

System.Windows.Forms.Application.Exit();

You have to put this code in to the form's closing event in all form. Example:

private void frm_menu_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
{
    System.Windows.Forms.Application.Exit();
}

Upvotes: 113

John Nyingi

Reputation: 1110

This issue commonly occurs when running tests. If this is your case just go to Task Manager and kill testHost

Upvotes: 0

Albert -Al- Hollmann

Reputation: 27

Use Ms Process Explorer to find out that you need to turn on "Application Experience" in Windows 7

In my case, none of all the other suggestions worked (Windows 7, VS2019)

After compiling, the generated .EXE file was reproducably locked for about one minute. Another strange observation: When deleting the .EXE file, it disappeared in the File Explorer like usual, but then re-appeared when refreshing (F5).

You can use MS Process Explorer to find out if any process holds a handle on your generated .EXE file. To do so, view the "lower pane" of the Process Explorer, select viewing handles instead of DLLs, and use "Find" to search for your .EXE file.

This showed me that is was the Windows 7 "System" process that got a handle on the .EXE.

Some research then revealed that i had to turn on the Windows "Application Experience" service ("automatic start") to permanently get rid of this strange behaviour.

Here is some more info: Under which circumstances does the System process (PID 4) retain an open file handle?

Upvotes: 0

Josh

Reputation: 189

In my case, I was having trouble publishing to a folder that it was having trouble accessing. You can rule this out by trying to publish to a folder in your c drive which you should not have an issue accessing.

Upvotes: 0

Pitrs

Reputation: 231

The problem is that the debugger/builder creates the executable or library that is identified as a threat by the Anti-virus and therefore deleted right before it could be executed.

Preferably you should tweak your Anti-Virus software to not analyse your project folder.

Some ways to do this, ranked from best to worse, are:

Excluding your project folder from the Anti-Virus
Excluding pdb files (Not a 100% guaranteed fix)
Turning off Real-Time protection (Not Recommended)

Upvotes: 23

Uriil

Reputation: 12618

In my case it was Resharper Unit Tests runner (plus NUnit tests, never had such problem with MsTests). After killing the process, was able to rebuild process, without restarting OS or VS2013.

Other test runners, like xUnit can cause the same issue.

What helps then is to check if you can add a Dispose pattern, for example if you're adding a DbFixture and the database contacts isn't disposed properly. That will cause the assembly files being locked even if the tests completed.

Note that you can just add IDisposable interface to your DbFixture and let IntelliSense add the Dispose pattern. Then, dispose the related contained propertys and explicitly assign them to null.

That will help to end the tests in a clean way and unlock related locked files as soon as the tests ended.

Example (DBFixture is used by xUnit tests):

public class DbFixture: IDisposable
{
    private bool disposedValue;
    public ServiceProvider ServiceProvider { get; private set; }
    
    public DbFixture()
    {
        // initializes ServiceProvider
    }
    
    
    protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (!disposedValue)
        {
            if (disposing)
            {
                // dispose managed state (managed objects)
                ServiceProvider.Dispose();
                ServiceProvider = null;
            }

            // TODO: free unmanaged resources (unmanaged objects) and override finalizer
            // TODO: set large fields to null
            disposedValue = true;
        }
    }

    // // TODO: override finalizer only if 'Dispose(bool disposing)' has code to free unmanaged resources
    // ~DbFixture()
    // {
    //     // Do not change this code. Put cleanup code in 'Dispose(bool disposing)' method
    //     Dispose(disposing: false);
    // }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        // Do not change this code. Put cleanup code in 'Dispose(bool disposing)' method
        Dispose(disposing: true);
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }
}

The same pattern you need for the test class itself - it needs its own Dispose method (as shown for the DbFixture class above):

   public SQL_Tests(ITestOutputHelper output)
    {
        this.Output = output;
        var fixture = new DbFixture(); // NOTE: MS Dependency injection framework didn't initialize when the fixture was a constructor param, hence it is here
        _serviceProvider = fixture.ServiceProvider;
    } // method

So it needs to dispose its local property _serviceProvider in its own Dispose method, because the test class constructor SQL_Tests instanciated it.

Upvotes: 2

M.Hassan

Reputation: 11032

You can kill the application by script.

If your application is named myapp.exe, run the next script in the terminal:

taskkill /IM myapp.exe /F

the parameters are:

/IM   application name (imagename)

 /F                     Specifies to forcefully terminate the process(es).

Upvotes: 2

WEFX

Reputation: 8552

If you're running into this issue using Visual Studio Code (vsCode) and/or you're sticking to terminal commands, the clean command will delete the build files and typically fix the issue described:

dotnet clean

Then, you can return to running:

dotnet build

dotnet run

Upvotes: 2

OAslan

Reputation: 114

You must kill the process after closing. I fixed it with;

Process.GetCurrentProcess().Kill();

Add this code to closing event or method whats you use for closing.

Upvotes: 2

progLearner

Reputation: 123

I have add the same problem various times and none of the answers from this treat could help or if they did it was by using a nasty work around.
What I figured is that there is always a good reason for this problem to occur (And is not a Microsoft bug! - Well, VS could get better at flagging it though :-)).

The main reason may simply be that your project dependencies are messed up!
As a simple example ():

You have multiple projects within a same solution
You clean + build all and assume everything went well as you see no error
You start running one of the project - All good so far!
Then start running a second one, but this one has dependencies also used by the previous project and tries to rebuild them
It then hangs for a while
It fails to build as the first project is already running and does not allow you to override ongoing processes

Now you can think of all the possible scenarios that could trigger an error of the sort:

Error Could not copy "obj\Debug\ProjectX.exe" to "..\bin\Debug\ProjectX.exe". Exceeded retry count of 10. Failed. The file is locked by: "ProjectX (17132)" ProjectX

Fixing this issue is usually a tedious process as you will have to perfectly understand all the dependencies in your system

Upvotes: 1

Dicekey

Reputation: 405

I am working on a micro service projects solution where I need to run two projects at the same time, the conflict occurs when the lunchsettings.json applicationurl: {portNo} part for the two running projects are the same port

lunchsettings.json for first project

...
"Project#1": {
  ...
  "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:5001",
  ...
}

lunchsettings.json for second project

...
"Project#2": {
  ...
  "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:5001",
  ...
}

To fix it

lunchsettings.json for first project

...
"Project#1": {
  ...
  "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:5001",
  ...
}

lunchsettings.json for secondproject

...
"Project#2": {
  ...
  "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:5002",
  ...
}

Upvotes: 1

iDeveloper

Reputation: 1725

@Gerard's answer was correct.

When clean+build has not resolved this problem for me, I have had success by doing the following:

Closing Visual Studio
Deleting the bin and obj folders, and
Reopening Visual Studio.

But I needed to do some extra work in console:

> Add-Migration Initial
> Update-Database

Then I started to debug and it worked.

Upvotes: 1

Shahin

Reputation: 12843

I managed to get around the issue by running the Visual Studio as administrator.

Upvotes: 1

Allan Zeidler

Reputation: 337

Sometimes it cannot clear the DEBUG folder. What I did and worked was renaming the file that could not be deleted. So, erase all the folder and the file that cannot be deleted, rename to, for example, "_old".

Upvotes: 1

Tonatio

Reputation: 4198

In my case it was a permission problem. I had to run Visual Studio as administrator.

Upvotes: 1

Gentleman

Reputation: 139

If none of the answers works, try this simple check. Find for any MSbuild.exe running and holding your project EXE. Kill MSBuild.exe and you should be good to go.

Upvotes: 6

Kelvin

Reputation: 855

I found a complete solution!

Most answers tell you to kill the process, however with process hacker, I couldn't find any.

I found a relatively simple solution.

Select your primary form in the Form Designer.
Click to your events tab on the properties menu.
Doubleclick the event FormClosing. This automatically generates the event system and function:

private void [your form name here]_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)

Inside this function, add Application.Exit

Like so:



private void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
{
    Application.Exit();
}

helpful image

I hope this helps! This problem really sucked!

Fix 2

Turn on a service called 'Application Experience.'

Upvotes: 2

Gerard

Reputation: 13397

I have encountered similar error messages in Visual Studio 2013.

Mostly, I have found that this situation has occurred when a debug process was halted because of an exception.

When clean+build has not resolved this problem for me, I have had success by doing the following:

Closing Visual Studio
Deleting the bin and obj folders, and
Reopening Visual Studio.

This "bug" has existed since Visual Studio 2003.

Finally, I have also found that I can often overcome this problem by simply renaming the executable file and then deleting it.

Upvotes: 550

Akshay Bagi

Reputation: 199

Follow the below steps

Open Task Manager ( Ctrl + Alt + Delete )
Under Performance tab select select <ProjectNameOfYours.exe>.
Click on End Process.
Now Build solution.

Above steps resolved error permanently :)

Upvotes: 10

electrodrel

Reputation: 374

In my case the files VS coulnd't copy were those of the .Task project, so the problem was that I had a few scheduled tasks running locally. Once I stopped and disabled them, the copy problem disappeared.

Upvotes: 1

Joe

Reputation: 7004

Spent a few hours trying to sort this out, then found out I was working on a service - remember to stop any services as part of your solution!

Upvotes: 1

drlff

Reputation: 256

I realize this is just adding to the already huge amount of answers for this question, but thought it deserved mentioning that, although not perfect, a combination of the answers given by: @Stefano, @MichaelRibbons, and @IvanFerrerVilla has provided a decent bit of success, when neither of them on their own was very successful.

Upvotes: 0

tmighty

Reputation: 11399

Add this to the pre-built:

(if exist "$(TargetDir)*old.exe" del "$(TargetDir)*old.exe") & (if exist "$(TargetDir)*.exe" ren "$(TargetDir)*.exe" *.old.exe)

Upvotes: 1

Visual Studio &quot;Could not copy&quot; .... during build

Answers (30)

Use Ms Process Explorer to find out that you need to turn on "Application Experience" in Windows 7

I found a complete solution!

Fix 2

Related Questions

Visual Studio "Could not copy" .... during build