Feature class locked/involved in phantom Geometric network

Question

I tried creating a geometric network on a feature dataset and there was an error and if I remember correctly, ArcMap decided to crash. Now one of my feature classes is forever locked. I try to delete it and it says it can't be deleted. I try to create a new geometric network and it says it is unavailable because it participates in another network. There is no other Geometric Network in the feature dataset. For now I copied the feature class so I could add it to the Network but now I have the extra feature class that is useless. I tried to edit it by deleting the feature in it and I get an error that says the feature could not be deleted and most recently my mxd just crashes when I try to edit it.  I'm actually trying to decide if I even need a Geometric Network.  I'm creating a feature that shows the routes of our Sanitation trucks as they pick up trash.  I had originally wanted to show the flow arrows but I'm not sure if it worth having the headaches of a Geometric Network to achieve this.  I use Geometric Networks for my utilities and it is beneficial there.  Any ideas?

JoshWhite · Answer

I honestly can't remember what I ended up doing.  Most likely I called technical support to resolve it. I do know that I don't have the issue currently.

ChrisDupont · Answer

Not a timely response, considering this post is three years old, but as I recently had this issue (geometric network creation was halted midway through, could not create a new geometric network with those objects), I thought I would comment for anyone else that has the same problem.

It looks like that as part of the geometric network creation process, the application will first create a topology object. If the creation process crashes or is halted halfway through, that topology object will remain -but since it is not an expected object, most would just see that the geometric network was not created and not notice that there is now a topology object. That object will need to be deleted before you can start the creation process again, since a feature class can either participate in a topology object or a geometric network, but not both. (And to the deletion issue, you can't delete objects that participate in either until you delete the top level topology or geometric object).