Geoprocess says it ran but no results are generated

[MannyGimond]

I'm teaching a GIS course this semester that I've taught for many years using similar if not identical workflows. A reoccurring problem has been popping up this fall whereby a geoprocess fails to generate results while suggesting that it ran successfully.

Here are the symptoms:

• Once the geoprocess is executed, the green check mark pops up indicating that the geoprocess tool ran successfully. The green check mark usually pops up shortly after executing the geoprocess (suggesting that the process may not have really run);
• No output file is generated;
• The geoprocess shows up in the Results window pane with the "hammer" icon but the message tab is empty;
• Rerunning the same geoprocess results in the same outcome;
• If the MXD document is saved, closed then reopened, the geoprocess shows up under the Not Run tab of the Results window pane.

Here's the workaround:

• Saving, closing then reopening the MXD and re-running the same geoprocess from the Results window pane  generates the desired output.

A few additional notes:

• We're running ArcMap 10.6.0.8321 on Windows 10. This problem manifests itself on Dell AIO 5720s and Dell Optiplex AIO 5250 hardware.
• This has happened on several occasions throughout this semester using different geoprocessing tools. Some tools that come to mind are the dissolve tool, point density tool and raster calculator. 
• At times, this has happened to several students running the same geoprocess during a lab exercise (suggesting a quasi-random trigger). In such a scenario, the students (24 in the class) run the exact same series of geoprocesses then encounter the problem on a subsequent geoprocess. On one occasion, about a third of the students encountered this problem whereas the other students did not.

I haven't had luck finding a description to this problem on the web so I'm not sure how unique this is.  Anyone else experience this anomaly?

[DuncanHornby · Accepted solution]

You say the green tick pops up which suggests you are running the tools in the background. Suggest you enable foreground processing by unticking that option that may improve stability.

Go to menu geoprocessing > options

[MannyGimond]

Thanks for the tip, Duncan. I had the students implement your suggestion for the last month of the course and the anomalous behavior has not manifested itself since. I will consider this a fix for now.

[mohammadbader]

there is no such option for disabling background processing ?!!

[Matt-Goodman]

This same thing happened to me today. Twice I tried  running the Feature Class to Geodatabase tool in ArcCatalog (10.5.1). The Windows pop-up stated that the process had run, but there was no output and, upon digging into the Geoprocessing Results window, no messages from the tool at all (completely blank: no tool start time, end time, parameters, etc.)

Indeed, disabling background geoprocessing resolved the issue (Geoprocessing> Geoprocessing Options > uncheck the "Enable" under Background Geoprocessing).

I'd still consider this a bug behaviorally, since the software apparently doesn't realize that it's not working.