Unable to delete the file

[Sridhar_Ramaiah_6588]

we are unable to delete the file and getting the message as "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process".

can someone help on this please.

[Luu_Le_185]

Hi Sridhar,

That appear to be a general window OS error message.  What file are you trying to delete (is it a file created/used by the Automation Engine?)  On what version of the OS are you doing this on?

[Sridhar_Ramaiah_6588]

Hey. thanks for quick reply.

 we are trying to delete the .dat file used by the AE. I am not aware of OS version.

[Luu_Le_185]

I am curious to what AE component is that .dat file under (folder-wise), I checked my own system and didn't see any .dat file?    With Window Operating System, if the file you are trying to delete is still being used/open by any program it won't allow you to delete it.

Depending on what that file is used by what component.   If its still being used by that specific AE component then I you might need to wait for it to finish what its using that file for.  Or Stop that component that using that .dat file  Or if its not being used by that AE component anymore, then I would check to see if anyone else that is also logged into that machine (but having that file edit/open).

I know from my own experience in the past when I have ran into the "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process" error message, (I was trying to delete other .txt files).  In my case, it was either being opened/used by another colleague, it was used by another process/program.

I had to have my colleague close out their program that's having the file opened or another time it was another editor still holding onto that file, so I log off and back on... and one time, I had to just kill the program that using that file (as I could not wait until it ended).

But being a generic windows error message, there are a lot of possibility of what other "program" is still using that file.

[Sridhar_Ramaiah_6588]

hi,

user confirmed that they do not have access to open the file. So option of file being kept open is ruled out I guess. File is being used only by AE to process further. The same folder is being accessed by different jobs. but other files in same folder used by AE are processed without any issue.

[Luu_Le_185]

With this error, it always hard to determine on the Window OS.  If this is a test/QA etc.. and if you are able to do so, can you shut down the AE and try to delete that file?  That way, if even after doing that, and you still get the same message/error then you can at least verify that something else is still using that file. 

The reason I state this, was I had an incident where the file was open by another process, although I had closed all my other open program (some of its process were still running in the background, so it never release it).  So in that instance, in my own system, when I shut down the AE and it didn't resolve the issue.  I ended up, logging all other user completely off (and myself) and then to log back in. (in other extreme cases, I had to just restart the machine, so that whatever was still using it would shut down).

[Judith Gitahi]

I am getting the same error. Jobs are failing left and right! It's been going on for a while now.

[Luu_Le_185]

Hi Judith,

Are these happening on jobs that are running on a particular window agents? or just happening across the board

[Judith Gitahi]

It's happening on jobs on a particular window agent.

[Luu_Le_185]

I think the most easiest thing to try is simply restarting the agent to see if it resolve the issue.  Along with that, these jobs that are failing on that particular window agent.  Are they always the same set of jobs? Do they writing/modifying any files or moving any files?.  One we can narrow down more, we can see for example A) if these all write/modified a file and them moved them, maybe we need to add a wait so that it give time for Window to release the process.  Or B.) see if any other program is running/using the files that these jobs are touching.

[Judith Gitahi]

There were a lot of jobs running at the same time every five to ten minutes. I stopped some jobs and that seem to have fixed the issue. Thanks for your input.

[Luu_Le_185]

Glad to hear it that it working for you Judith. From the sound of it, it seem as if those other job are using/trying to access/modify the same files?