Zotero not opening on desktop - says it is already open

When I try to open Zotero, a box pops up that says "A copy of Zotero is already open. Only one copy of Zotero can be open at a time." However, I cannot find any other place where Zotero is open and running. When I go to force quit, zotero is NOT an available application to close, indicating that it is NOT open and running. How do I fix this?
  • Does it work if you restart your computer? What operating system are you running?
  • Thank you - when I originally restarted, it did not fix it. It did, however, restore itself when I shut the computer down entirely and closed all open programs.
  • Presumably there is a pid-file or similar placed somewhere. Where is it? It's a bit poor if I have to reboot the server just to clear an application's internal lock.
  • OK, in my case it was a misleading message problem. Although Zotero claimed that there was an instance running, the problem was permissions and ownership on the directory specified in the Path variable in profiles.ini I'm in the middle of a major distribution change: Centos 7 -> AlmaLinux (since C8 is being killed off). In my particular case:
    1) Check ~/.zotero/profiles.ini
    2) For each profile check the Path variable
    3) Hence check accessibility to the directories.
    HTH.
  • Permissions were my problem also. Really appreciated this thread and the help it provided. Thanks!!
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