Regular crashing: Zip in use by another process

[jdyer]

Hello fellow propeller heads-

I've got a couple of problems that have been plaguing me for quite some time. I am having some extreme difficulty trying to resolve, so I thought I would see if anyone else has had similar issues.

The main issue I am having is that Flare routinely crashes (at least 9-10 times a day) and points to a message that indicates "The process cannot access the file "...ZIP" because it is being used by another process.

september17crashblur.png

I don't have a clue what other process is using the file. At one point, I did have an auto back up via Kryptonite running, but I have since disabled that process and even uninstalled that for the time being. I also thought it was my anti-virus doing random scans on my pc, but I have also removed that for the time being. I have scaled everything back to the point that I manually disable every other application and non-core system process while flare is running and the program still crashes.

I have spent many calls over many months with Flare tech support to try and resolve... but the problem still occurs. I would think that this is perhaps a PC issue, but I have experienced this same issue on not just one, but four different PCs provided by my job. Two were more traditional Dell laptops, and the most recent have been two Surface Pro 3s. All were brand new and all have exhibited the same crashing.

Has anyone else seen something like this? I would be eternally in debt if anyone can help.

I'm currently using Flare 11 on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. I've seen the crashing in Windows 7,8, and I am currently using Windows 10. The error message is attached.

[RamonS]

Do you by any chance use Outlook to email the ZIP archive? I found that Outlook keeps a thumb on any files that were attached until Outlook is closed.

[jdyer]

Do you by any chance use Outlook to email the ZIP archive? I found that Outlook keeps a thumb on any files that were attached until Outlook is closed.

Ramon- thanks for thinking about this. The only time I've actually emailed any part of my project away is when I sent it to Madcap Support for troubleshooting. Even with that, I believe we used an FTP connection to exchange details. I don't believe I've ever actually emailed anything using Outlook.

[RamonS]

You might want to use process explorer to find the process that holds that file, see here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... g-file.htm

[SteveS]

Another program that keeps it thumb on files is snaggit, might be worth closing it if its running and see if that helps (although if you've zipped a file it shouldn't be hangin' on)

[jdyer]

Another program that keeps it thumb on files is snaggit, might be worth closing it if its running and see if that helps (although if you've zipped a file it shouldn't be hangin' on)

Thanks Steve- I don't use snaggit specifically, but I see where you are going.

You might want to use process explorer to find the process that holds that file, see here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... g-file.htm

Thank you, Ramon. During troubleshooting with Madcap Support, we downloaded this program but we were not able to find out what program/process was actually using any of the files that were identified during a crash.

[MattyQ]

There's a command line version of Process Explorer called "Handle" that returns really clean, specific results. You might give that a try: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sys ... 96655.aspx

In your case, in Command Prompt, you'd want to navigate to the directory where you unzipped Handle, and then run the following command: handle "C:\whateveryoublurredout\AppData\Local\Temp\Review.4.log.temp.zip"

You could also run the following command from Command Prompt: "c:\pathtohandle\handle.exe" "C:\whateveryoublurredout\AppData\Local\Temp\Review.4.log.temp.zip"

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As an aside, could it be an issue with Flare's error reporting? Have you checked to see if it's something as simple as the ZIP file is set to Read Only? (Though usually this returns a Denied Access error, or something along those lines.)

[jdyer]

Thanks everyone for pitching in and making suggestions. I made a last ditch effort to resolve this and contacted Flare Support again. After a new round of suggestions, this seems to have resolved the issue. I haven't had the same type of crash since following these steps.

In case anyone else is having similar problems, here is what Shelli @ Madcap suggested:

Could you remove Flare from the machine and reinstall to see if this resolves the behavior? You'll need the license key to reinstall. If the activation needs to be released, please let me know.

To remove Flare completely from the machine:

1. From Windows, open the Control Panel
2. In the Control Panel, open Program and Features 3. Find and select MadCap Flare from the list 4. Click Uninstall

After uninstalling Flare, there will be some files and registry entries that must be removed 1. Click on Start and then Run 2. In the Run dialog, type in "regedit" and click the OK button 3. In the Registry Editor, go to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/MadCap Software folder 4. Find the Flare folder, right click and choose Export, to create a backup, just in case 5. Then, select and press the Delete key 6. Navigate to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MadCap Software 7. Delete the Flare directory in this location

Then, please use the link below to download Flare 11:
http://www.madcapsoftware.com/downloads ... 2jh3c.aspx

Please run the .exe as Admin (shift + right-click > Run as Administrator). Also, if we could ask your IT department to see if we can delete the items inside the AppData\Local\Temp folder, since that is where the message is pointing to.


In addition to the suggestions above, I found that there were some processes that had somehow been enabled to launch on start-up that I disabled. The programs that I disabled were Adobe processes.

I'm not sure if it was simply Shelli's instructions that resolved this or if it was a combination of those instructions and me killing the start-up programs, but I have been free from this annoyance for almost a full week now.