System.IO.IOException

[Mark Propellerhead]

I get the following error many times during my HTML5 build. I am unable to finish the build because of this or even close Flare, even with the Task Manager:

System.IO.IOException occurred at 8/12/2023 11:59:52 AM

The process cannot access the file 'C:\SECURONIX\Securonix User Guide\Output\Mark\HTML5-zoomin-multi-tenant-PROD\content\resources\images\active-deployment-guides\microsoft\1_files\unnamed(26).png' because it is being used by another process.

Please help!

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[trent the thief]

Hi Mark,

Take a look at the error dialog. The file that it's looking for is soar-settings-4.png.

Could it be that you had edited that file, close it, and left the editing program open? I've noticed that after editing a file with GIMP and closing it or sometimes from XnViewMP that I need to close the app to actually free the image. Otherwise, Windows thinks it's locked and won't let other apps do anything with it.

[SteveS]

I recently installed Microsoft's PowerToys. One of its utilities is "What's using this file?" which allows you to see what application or process has locked a file or folder. Very handy in situations like this.

Outlook has always been notorious for locking files. Some PDF readers do it, and I've experienced the same with Snagit, but Snagit usually is pretty good.

[Psider]

Another option could be overzealous antivirus. I've seen that lock files before. In a previous job we had to get IT to exclude the output folders from virus scan.

[Mark Propellerhead]

I restarted my machine and started the build first thing. It still happens. When I got the error, I tried the "What's using this file" tool in PowerToys as suggested. It reports "No Results".

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[trent the thief]

Hi Mark,

It looks like it never chokes on the same file.

1. What is the source for your images?
2. If you're capturing them, are you saving them from the capture app before adding them in Flare or adding and naming during a drag and drop?
3. If capturing, is the capture app closed when you see the error?
4. If you edited an image, is the editor still open?
5. If they came from an emailed ZIP, are both the email and the attachment (in 7z/winzip/Windows Explorer) closed when you see the error?
6. Did you have a terminal window open in the image's directory?

[NorthEast]

To start with, I'd suggest doing some of the steps for cleaning a project:
1) Close the project.
2) Delete the Analyzer folder, to clear the Analyzer database. This will be regenerated by Flare the next time you open the project.
3) Delete the Output folder, as this clears temporary build files.
4) Move the Project/Users folder somewhere else, to temporarily remove user files. These contain some user settings like pinned styles, so you might want to keep these and move the files back if they weren't the problem.
5) Open the project again, and pray to the MadCap gods.

Also note that you shouldn't keep Flare projects in folders that are automatically synchronised/backed-up using OneDrive or other similar tools. That will cause lots of file-related problems.