"File... could not be created" error. What is this and why am I getting it?

littleraskol
http://tinypic.com/r/17zeqa/6

Suddenly started appearing every time I start Zotero or try to sync for no reason. I have unchecked the "Read Only" attribute on the folder, nothing changes.
  • adamsmith
    provide an error report ID:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs#provide_a_report_id
    maybe this has something useful, though this is pretty much always either due to permissions or security software.
  • littleraskol
    477288342
  • dstillman
    Have you tried disabling your security software?
  • littleraskol
    I don't know what "security software" this is supposed to be. I have antivirus, but turning off its active shielding did not resolve the issue. I also have the "Tea Timer" resident for Spybot S&D, but disabling that also had no effect.
  • dstillman
    What antivirus software?

    Something is still interfering. This isn't an issue in Zotero itself. Something is preventing Zotero from accessing the filesystem—either security software or file permissions on the Zotero data directory (or the folders above/below it). There's nothing Zotero can do about that, so I'm afraid you'll need to figure out what's causing it.

    I assume you've tried restarting your computer?
  • littleraskol
    edited February 9, 2013
    My antivirus software is Avast.

    I'm trying to do everything I can to *avoid* having to restart my computer, because frankly, that's a crazy imposition for something like this. There is no permissions block because I can delete, create, and modify files in the directory just fine. It is not my antivirus or anti-malware software because turning those off did nothing. I have removed any read-only flag. There are no process or DLL handles showing that some program is using the directory and preventing modification. If restarting "works," that's fine, but I really don't think that having to restart my whole computer is an adequate solution for some random inexplicable bug like this.

    In the interests of science, I shut down any program that could be using the Zotero app directory (Standalone, Firefox), backed up the offending directory ("XRXXRUTA"), deleted it, and started up Zotero. During the sync process, it *re-creates* the directory and downloads its contents, then throws the same error. I find it very hard to believe, given this, that the error is some other program on my computer, and not Zotero's sync process.
  • littleraskol
    edited February 9, 2013
    As a side note, I have paid close enough attention to the error behavior to note that every time I restart Zotero, it complains about a different file in that directory. However, the file is never actually *present* in the directory. Not sure if this is useful info or not.
  • littleraskol
    Restarting has indeed "resolved the error." However, I still think that, for the reasons listed in a prior post, it is a mistake to assume that this is an issue external to Zotero. Having to restart one's entire computer can be a real hassle, and if there is a way to prevent that by fixing an error in the software, it should be pursued.

    I had a good reason to not want to have to restart my computer: it sometimes causes erratic behavior in other programs I use, for reasons I have yet to figure out. When they are working fine, I prefer to let them continue working fine. Having restarted my computer to fix this issue, these other programs are now "acting up" and I am still not sure how to resolve that.

    Please take under consideration the possibility that when this error occurs, it is actually something wrong with Zotero's sync process. There was simply no way that there could be any external interference with using that directory. If I could add, remove, and change files within it, even to the point of deleting the whole directory, and Zotero would restore it on its own, continue throwing the error, and if the error involved files not even present, I think it's safe to say that something more is going on than interference from "security software" (which I disabled) or "read only flags" (which I made sure to remove).
  • adamsmith
    Just to be clear - this keeps coming back after you restarted? Or you had this problem once, it went away after restarting and hasn't reoccurred so far?
  • littleraskol
    No, when I restarted my computer, the Zotero "File could not be created" error was gone and has not shown up again. What I wrote in my last post is that other programs I use are acting weird, which is something that just happens sometimes when I restart my computer and is unrelated to Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    edited February 9, 2013
    as long as this doesn't re-occur I'd leave it at that (even in the highly unlikely case that this'd be related to Zotero - how would we go about troubleshooting something that can't even be reproduced on your own computer, let alone on the devs set-up?).
    Windows, unfortunately, is rather susceptible as an OS to those types of issues - that's why most troubleshooting advice for Windows begins with "restart your computer" - the place to take this is your other software. What is really unacceptable is that any software - and especially Windows software, since Windows relies on restarts e.g. for security updates - wouldn't work properly after a restart.
  • littleraskol
    Right, well, I'm not blaming the Zotero devs for what's happening with these other programs.
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