Geek Answers Handbook

Visual Studio 11 Dev Preview: unable to remove thumbs.db

I had a serious problem with my development workflow in Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview under Windows 8 Developer Preview. Here is what I see, and other friends see the same thing.

  • Open Visual Studio
  • Create a new empty Javascript application
  • Add base code to add label (code and project don't seem to matter)
  • Start with debugging (local machine)
  • Works fine
  • Stop debugging
  • Run again
  • Build completion

  • Deployment Failed

    1> ------ The assembly is running: Project: MyProject, Configuration: Debugging Any processor ------ 1> MyProject-> C: \ Users \ mmoser \ Documents \ Visual Studio 11 \ Projects \ MyProject \ MyProject \ Debug \ MyProject.build.appxrecipe 2> ------ Deployment started: Project: MyProject, Configuration: Debug Any processor ------ 2> Error DEP0500: Cannot delete the folder "C: \ Users \ mmoser \ AppxLayouts \ MyProject.Debug.AnyCPU.mmoser "for the following reason: 2> The process cannot access the file" Thumbs.db "because it is being used by another process. 2> One or more errors have occurred. =========== Build: 1 failed, 0 failed, 0 updated, 0 skipped ===================== Deployment: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 skipped ===========

  • Try to delete the folder from Windows Explorer, the same error

  • Wait anywhere from a few seconds to a minute-ish
  • Try again and it works.

This is very disruptive, and I cannot continue developing my application. I am developing this with a friend, and now he sees the same problem.

We are wondering if Visual Studio does not properly release access to the deployment folders?

Any help with this would be awesome! I find myself stuck, and our project has stalled ... please help!

+4
source share
2 answers

That's all, I talked with the VS team in BUILD and solved the problem. Thanks Kieran Mokford! It seems that there are several scenarios where the processes are not completely closed, and they can hold layout files and potentially other files during the development workflow.

Three senaria that I know about now:

  • When you stop debugging, the user interface of the application is no longer displayed, but WWAHost.exe is still working (Javascript applications), and this has access to the files.
  • If you run Simulator, you can start a session that may cause other problems with accessing the file (and not the ones that I described in this post)
  • If you use a data exchange agreement with data, it uses brokerage services and this does not always close.

If you are using problems with locked files that you are trying to create or deploy, I would recommend downloading Process Explorer from sysinternals and see which process is stored in your files. Then run it in the task manager.

Note. My problem was number 1. I was creating a JavaScript application and the WWAHost process (Windows Web Application Host) was still running.

+1
source

The thumbs.db file is a file created by Explorer that contains thumbnail preview images.

Have you accidentally opened an explorer window in your AppX layout folder? In this case, the layout folder is "C: \ Users \ mmoser \ AppxLayouts \ MyProject.Debug.AnyCPU.mmoser". Locked files do not allow us to update the layout folder, and therefore the deployment will fail.

FYI: I work for MS on the VS Pro team. If you still have a problem, write a Connect error and we can take a look at it. (Http://connect.microsoft.com/)

+1
source

More articles:


All Articles