workspace suddenly becomes read-only

[MatthewFoster]

Hi Everyone,
This is driving me crazy.  I will be working on editing a point shapefile (or feature class in a file geodatabase), adding points and an attribute for the ID as I go along.  I can save the edits as I go (and I do), but after a few saves, the shapefile or feature class suddenly becomes read-only - or at least, that is what ArcGIS tells me, "Unable to save edits. Workspace or data source is read only".  I never set anything to read only, and after successfully saving my file 3 times (in the latest case) it decides to give me this error on the fourth time!  I have tried putting the geodatabase in a different directory, I've tried as a shapefile... Any ideas?  This has happened repeatedly with different projects lately.  Very frustrating

Thanks in advance,

Matt

[IB1]

Add me to the list, just happened. I don't even know how much I've lost.

[GISTeam4]

Another update on the issue: still not resolved. It seems to be very irregular; some day it works just fine, another day the whole program just keeps crashing (and I keep sending error reports, hoping they'll actually do something with those) and yet another day it keeps locking up while editing. I don't want to mess with my registry keys, sounds fishy and above all, it shouldn't be necessary. ArcMap is starting to behave like a grumpy old man; you never know how it'll react today.
My only hope is now to wait for the next release in june and I think I'll remove the whole thing and install fresh.

Good luck, and the only thing I can say, keep saving after every little edit you do.

[IB1]

I keep getting this error EVERYTIME I make a lot of edits (10,000+) at once to an attribute table.

I thought it might be something corrupt with the geodatabase, so I created a new one and just copied the data over.

But it still gives me the error.

I then opened the geodatabase on a different computer and did the same edits and it worked fine.

So, that tells me it's something with the install on my computer?

Great.

[LauraMiles1]

This just happened to me, thankfully I try and save my edits frequently so didn't lose much. This has potential to be disastrous. I took a look at services/processes in task manager but I have no idea what 99% of those items are.

[CourtneyMoore1]

Hi everyone -
I've been experiencing a very similar issue as well:
When copying & pasting data or importing a xml (with and without data), my file geodatabase suddenly becomes "Read-Only" and states that my workspace or data source is read only (see attachments of the various errors).  I also have received this issue when editing, and I cannot save edits.  This issue is very inconsistent on when it actually errors. Sometimes (more and more rarely though), I am successful; other times, it'll error on the first or second item being copied; other times, half the data will be pasted to the workspace.  I'm working in 10.1 SP1 and Windows 7 64-bit, and have had this issue since I moved to 10.1.

I've tried a lot of things: getting our IT administrator to exclude the file types in a fgdb in our Microsoft Forefront Protection anti-virus software, turning off the AGS online login (renaming the file so it does not appear at all), and even going as far as to re-format my computer and complete a fresh install.  I've been working with Esri support, however, they are unable to reproduce this issue.

The last debugging advice I received from Esri Support is to turn off services on the computer and test, and turn off more and test again, until the issue is narrowed down.  Here are the instructions:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135
Follow steps 1-10 under the Windows7 and Windows Vista section of "How to determine what is causing the problem by performing a clean boot".  We basically want to try and narrow down a conflicting startup item through testing.

I'm posting this so hopefully if others are experiencing the same issue, perhaps the above debugging method will help us.  I have been unsuccessful in finding the issue, however, I have not been able to test every service.  Hopefully, we'll be able to find a solution!

See attachments for more information.

Thanks
Courtney

[JohannesPlambeck1]

I found that in Win7, going to [Task Manager\Processes] and selecting ArcGIScacheMgr.exe and ending that process (while exiting the application) fixes a problem like this. Doing this has also helped me overcome the problem of when a spatial join fails to finish (another weird problem).

The quick fix that works specifically for this problem though is simply removing the geodatabase from the table of contents (layers menu) -- try re-exporting your data again after doing this.

[Wei-HsinFu]

I first experienced this problem fall 2012.  Spent numerous hours with Esri tech. support and got no solution.  I used ArcGIS 9.3 on a XP machine and ArcGIS 10.1 on a Windows 7 machine to test the same dataset.  ArcGIS 9.3 did not have problem saving edits; ArcGIS 10.1 did.  Esri tech. support said it is a problem of our network, because the problem disappeared after we moved the data to local disk.  I don't quite buy it because ArcGIS 9.3 never had the problem, with the same data.  Someone told me he or she got the problem solved by turning off background processing, but it did not work for me.

The problem went away this year until just now...  I hope Esri can take this seriously and provide a solution.  We will have to consider a different software for our classes.

[KristofDhuyvetter]

Hey all,

I kind of have the same problem when I work with MOLE. I create a second layer data set, activate it, work with MOLE, turn back to my original data layer,and i can't edit anymore, in neither of the two data layer sets..

[FrancoisFord]

Same problem here and none of your suggestions above seem to work... Running ArcGis 10.1 on Win 7 64. Wasted so much time with this now... really annoying. Come on ESRI get your stuff together!

[AllisonHoskin-Kain]

Hi All,

I have come across the same error when trying to save into a FGDB.  I have never seen this error before until I upgraded to 10.1 recently.  We run on Windows XP.

Cheers
Allison

Edit - I was able to save the shapefile into the GDB from a new mxd.