Visual Studio Could not copy during build

Question

I keep getting this error during the build of my VS2012 C  project  Error   41  Could not copy  obj Debug WeinGartner WeinCad exe  to   bin Debug WeinGartner WeinCad exe     Exceeded retry count of 10  Failed        Error   42  Unable to copy file  obj Debug WeinGartner WeinCad exe  to  bin Debug WeinGartner WeinCad exe   The process cannot access the file  bin Debug WeinGartner WeinCad exe  because it is being used by another  process        Now I ve figured out that killing the process  Weingartner WeinCad vhost exe   works  sometimes   but this is getting on my nerves  Any way to stop this happening at all   My debugger settings are

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You must kill the process after closing  I fixed it with  Process GetCurrentProcess   Kill     Add this code to closing event or method whats you use for closing

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In Visual Studio Premium 2013  Update 3   I solved this with a pre-build one-liner    if exist    TargetDir  old pdb  del    TargetDir  old pdb    amp   if exist    TargetDir   pdb  ren    TargetDir   pdb    old pdb    This gracefully deletes any old PDB files  if it can   then renames anything that s left with a  old pdb extension   A nice side effect is that if the old PDB is still locked  it just adds another  old piece to the filename  and they all get cleaned up next time you restart Visual Studio and do a build     For example  build debug session 1 leaves MyProject pdb locked  The next time you build  MyProject pdb --  MyProject old pdb    Then  build debug session 2 is started  and both MyProject pdb and MyProject old pdb are still locked  MyProject old pdb --  MyProject old old pdb MyProject pdb --  MyProject old pdb    Finally  restarting Visual Studio and doing a fresh build will get rid of both of these  and continue the process as usual

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The fastest way is changing the Build configuration type and return to previous configuration again

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I am working on a micro service projects solution where I need to run two projects at the same time  the conflict occurs when the lunchsettings json  applicationurl   portNo  part for the two running projects are the same port   lunchsettings json for first project       Project 1              applicationUrl    http   localhost 5001             lunchsettings json for second project       Project 2              applicationUrl    http   localhost 5001                To fix it   lunchsettings json for first project       Project 1              applicationUrl    http   localhost 5001             lunchsettings json for secondproject       Project 2              applicationUrl    http   localhost 5002

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Add in pre-build event of your master project taskkill  f  fi  pid gt 0   im  YourProcess vshost exe

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Follow the below steps   Open Task Manager   Ctrl   Alt   Delete   Under Performance tab select select  lt ProjectNameOfYours exe   Click on End Process  Now Build solution    Above steps resolved error permanently

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Using DNN  I solved the problem by editing the MSBuild Community Tasks Targets file and changing the bin path    lt MSBuildDnnBinPath Condition     MSBuildDnnBinPath          gt   MSBuildProjectDirectory  bin lt  MSBuildDnnBinPath gt

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I realize this is just adding to the already huge amount of answers for this question  but thought it deserved mentioning that  although not perfect  a combination of the answers given by   Stefano   MichaelRibbons  and  IvanFerrerVilla has provided a decent bit of success  when neither of them on their own was very successful

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Sometimes it cannot clear the DEBUG folder  What I did and worked was renaming the file that could not be deleted  So  erase all the folder and the file that cannot be deleted  rename to  for example    old

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Use   Debug Flush    Debug Close      in case exception occurs  in catch or finally block   Edit  I personally faced this issue and I do a trick usually and it works fine  I change the type of build from  debug  to  release   and  release  to  debug  if there is already

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I have noticed some answers that solved my problem  BUT  just in case anyone is having the same problem I was     IF YOU ARE RUNNING A CONSOLE APP  BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE    Make sure you have closed out any console windows that may have been opened from a previous build  For instance I was just testing some code in a console application  I didn t realize that the console window from one of the previous times I ran my program was open  During that session I was debugging  the window got pushed to the back and I couldn t see it  Just saying  this could be your problem  so check to make sure that is not the problem

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Killing the vstest executionengine exe process es  resolves this issue 90  of the time for me   If that doesn t work  then also killing QTAgent32 exe and then deleting the  bin and  obj folders for the project in question works   This is the most irritating part of my work day

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I think I solved it removing the check mark to Break all processes when one process breaks in Debug options  op s first screenshot- second option   It s been building running well for a while since I unchecked it  I m using MySql NET Connector and DevExpress controls in my project  May be one of them was not disposing connections  bindings  etc  well because of this flag beeing activated     EDITED  definitely it works  No more  Unable to copy file  and no more Form designer errors

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In my case the files VS coulnd t copy were those of the  Task project  so the problem was that I had a few scheduled tasks running locally  Once I stopped and disabled them  the copy problem disappeared

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If none of the answers works  try this simple check   Find for any MSbuild exe running and holding your project EXE  Kill MSBuild exe and you should be good to go

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In my case  Windows 10  Visual Studio 2015     Task Manager -  Users -  EndTask  vshost exe   it restarts immediately and you can build again

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It s because you have closed your application  but it s still running in background   Temporary solution    Go to Task Manager  Ctrl   Alt   Esc   Go to Processes tab and find  YourProjectName exe   Check  Show processes from all users  if you can t find your process  End Process it    Permanent solution  you have to close your application through coding  Here is the code     System Windows Forms Application Exit      You have to put this code in to the form s closing event in all form  Example   private void frm menu FormClosing object sender  FormClosingEventArgs e        System Windows Forms Application Exit

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Check the task manager for any process running the  exe

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I have solved it by killing IISExpress in task manager

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I finally how fix it  Why we can t continue debug after the first debug because the first debug exe still running  So that  after first debug  you need to go to Task Manager -  Process Tab -   your project name exe  end the exe process    it works for me

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For me it was the Avast antivirus that wont let visual studio to write read execute file  So I had to add Visual studio 2010 2012 folder to antivirus exclusion list  And right after that baam    it works

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In my case it was Resharper Unit Tests runner  plus NUnit tests  never had such problem with MsTests   After killing the process  was able to rebuild process  without restarting OS or VS2013  Other test runners  like xUnit can cause the same issue  What helps then is to check if you can add a Dispose pattern  for example if you re adding a DbFixture and the database contacts isn t disposed properly  That will cause the assembly files being locked even if the tests completed  Note that you can just add IDisposable interface to your DbFixture and let IntelliSense add the Dispose pattern  Then  dispose the related contained propertys and explicitly assign them to null  That will help to end the tests in a clean way and unlock related locked files as soon as the tests ended  Example  DBFixture is used by xUnit tests   public class DbFixture  IDisposable       private bool disposedValue      public ServiceProvider ServiceProvider   get  private set             public DbFixture                    initializes ServiceProvider                     protected virtual void Dispose bool disposing                if   disposedValue                        if  disposing                                   dispose managed state  managed objects                  ServiceProvider Dispose                    ServiceProvider   null                                TODO  free unmanaged resources  unmanaged objects  and override finalizer                TODO  set large fields to null             disposedValue   true                             TODO  override finalizer only if  Dispose bool disposing   has code to free unmanaged resources         DbFixture                          Do not change this code  Put cleanup code in  Dispose bool disposing   method            Dispose disposing  false                 public void Dispose                    Do not change this code  Put cleanup code in  Dispose bool disposing   method         Dispose disposing  true           GC SuppressFinalize this            The same pattern you need for the test class itself - it needs its own Dispose method  as shown for the DbFixture class above      public SQL Tests ITestOutputHelper output                this Output   output          var fixture   new DbFixture       NOTE  MS Dependency injection framework didn t initialize when the fixture was a constructor param  hence it is here          serviceProvider   fixture ServiceProvider           method  So it needs to dispose its local property  serviceProvider in its own Dispose method  because the test class constructor SQL Tests instanciated it

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Reset IIS  stop services which are using your DLL  maybe console app or windows services hosted app or IIS  and then try   It worked for me

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Delete any  cache files under your Debug or Release folders inside the Bin folder

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Quote      A workaround is to put this in the Pre-build event command  line property of the  project   In the build  Events tab     Code Snippet  if exist    TargetPath  locked  del    TargetPath  locked   if exist    TargetPath   if not exist    TargetPath  locked  move    TargetPath      TargetPath  locked

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I encountered this problem in VS 2015  The reason for my environment was use of StyleCop project setting for StyleCopAdditionalAddinPaths Include       to specify additional StyleCop Addin path  The workaround I used was to remove this project setting from  csproj file  and instead  copy the StyleCop AddIn manually where the StyleCop CSharp Rules dll was present  Not an elegant solution  but I found that the solution never locked the dlls after doing this

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Gerard s answer was correct    When clean build has not resolved this problem for me  I have had success by doing the following   Closing Visual Studio Deleting the bin and obj folders  and Reopening Visual Studio    But I needed to do some extra work in console    gt  Add-Migration Initial  gt  Update-Database   Then I started to debug and it worked

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You can kill the application by script  If your application is named myapp exe  run the next script in the terminal  taskkill  IM myapp exe  F  the parameters are   IM   application name  imagename     F                     Specifies to forcefully terminate the process es

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I was going crazy trying to find why System process held an open handle on the EXE I was working with for another minute after it was terminated  and I was getting the same error as the OP   The reason was that the previous developers did not wrap IDisposable objects in using      Once the IDisposable objects correctly destroyed themselves  the error occurred no more and I was able to rebuild immediately

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This happened to me while using the IL Support plugin    When you do not have any IL file in your project  because you deleted the last one for example   build fails as described in the question    Removing support of IL resolved the issue

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I found a complete solution   Most answers tell you to kill the process  however with process hacker  I couldn t find any   I found a relatively simple solution    Select your primary form in the Form Designer  Click to your events tab on the properties menu  Doubleclick the event FormClosing  This automatically generates the event system and function    private void  your form name here  FormClosing object sender  FormClosingEventArgs e    Inside this function  add Application Exit   Like so    private void Form1 FormClosing object sender  FormClosingEventArgs e        Application Exit          helpful image      I hope this helps  This problem really sucked   Fix 2  Turn on a service called  Application Experience

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See this other answer  Basically  you could have MSBuild exe processes running in the background consuming resource files  If you have any pre or post build tasks that cause an MSBuild to be kicked off via command line  try adding the   nr false  flag to this command  But again  see the previous answer for more specific details

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I have add the same problem various times and none of the answers from this treat could help or if they did it was by using a nasty work around  What I figured is that there is always a good reason for this problem to occur  And is not a Microsoft bug  - Well  VS could get better at flagging it though  -       The main reason may simply be that your project dependencies are messed up  As a simple example         You have multiple projects within a same solution You clean   build all and assume everything went well as you see no error   You start running one of the project - All good so far    Then start running a second one  but this one has dependencies also used by the previous project and tries to rebuild them   It then hangs for a while   It fails to build as the first project is already running and does not allow you to override ongoing processes    Now you can think of all the possible scenarios that could trigger an error of the sort     Error Could not copy  obj Debug ProjectX exe  to     bin Debug ProjectX exe   Exceeded retry count of 10  Failed  The file is locked by   ProjectX  17132   ProjectX   Fixing this issue is usually a tedious process as you will have to perfectly understand all the dependencies in your system

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Geoff s  https   stackoverflow com a 25251766 3739540  answer is good  but it throws error code 1 on recompile   Here is what worked for me  2 nul 1 nul on the end   exit 0     if exist    TargetDir  old pdb  del    TargetDir  old pdb    amp   if exist    TargetDir   pdb  ren    TargetDir   pdb    old pdb  2 gt nul 1 gt nul  if exist    TargetDir  old dll  del    TargetDir  old dll    amp   if exist    TargetDir   dll  ren    TargetDir   dll    old dll  2 gt nul 1 gt nul exit 0

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Add this to the pre-built    if exist    TargetDir  old exe  del    TargetDir  old exe    amp   if exist    TargetDir   exe  ren    TargetDir   exe    old exe

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go to Tools  Options  DataBase Tools  General  Check Sqript Query Execution

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Make sure u close all instances wcfSvcHost and try again   It worked for me

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I was able to fix this issue  VS 2010  through supplying following pre build action   if exist    TargetPath  locked  del    TargetPath  locked   if exist    TargetPath   if not exist    TargetPath  locked  move    TargetPath      TargetPath  locked

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I have encountered similar error messages in Visual Studio 2013   Mostly  I have found that this situation has occurred when a debug process was halted because of an exception   When clean build has not resolved this problem for me  I have had success by doing the following    Closing Visual Studio Deleting the bin and obj folders  and Reopening Visual Studio    This  bug  has existed since Visual Studio 2003   Finally  I have also found that I can often overcome this problem by simply renaming the executable file and then deleting it

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I cannot give a solution to prevent this from happening but you can at least RENAME the locked file  windows explorer  or classic command window  and then compile build  No need to reboot or restart VS201x  With some experience you can add a pre-build script to delete old files or rename then out-of-the-way in case there s a lock

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Spent a few hours trying to sort this out  then found out I was working on a service - remember to stop any services as part of your solution

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In my case the Visual Studio 2105 Remote Debugger was the problem  When I killed this task in Task Manager I was able to successfully rebuild my application in Visual Studio

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My 10 cents contribution   I still have this problem occasionally on VS 2015 Update 2   I found that switching compilation target solves the problem   Try this  if you are in DEBUG switch to RELEASE and build  then back to DEBUG  The problem is gone   Stefano

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Open project properties   menu    project   properties   Choose  debug  tab Uncheck  Enable the visual studio hosting process  Start debugging  F5  You will receive security warning   just  ok   Lets application running Stop debugging  Check option  Enable the visual studio hosting  process    under debug tab  Now   try to start debugging   you will not see error again     Work for me

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You should disable your antivirus  especailly if it is an Avast  and try again  It helped me  The problem is that the debugger builder creates the  exe file that is identified as a threat by Avast and therefor deleted right before it could be executed by VS

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I managed to get around the issue by running the Visual Studio as administrator

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This question was the first result when looking for the following error      Could not copy the file       because it was not found    when building in Visual Studio 2013  Update 3    Solution  Uninstalling the  Productivity Power Tools  in Visual Studio 2013   https   connect microsoft com VisualStudio feedback details 533411

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Another kludge  ugh  but it s easy and works for me in VS 2013  Click on the project  In the properties panel should be an entry named Project File with a value   your project name  vbproj  Change the project name - such as adding an -01 to the end  The original  zip file that was locked is still there  but no longer referenced     so your work can continue  Next time the computer is rebooted  that lock disappears and you can delete the errant file

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I experienced the error-messages when attempting to build the primary WinForms  XAF  project   I could only execute the application one time then needed to shutdown the VS2015 IDE and restart before a rebuild could be performed   After some digging in the project s property pages - in the  debug  property page  a check box was selected - Enable the Visual Studio Hosting Process   I unchecked and restarted the IDE  the application is now building without -  unable to copy the  project  exe  messages     What is the purpose of the Visual Studio Hosting Process

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Here is a script to definitely get rid of this issue   REM   This script is invoked before compiling an assembly  and if the target file exist  it moves it to a temporary location REM   The file-move works even if the existing assembly file is currently locked-by in-use-in any process  REM   This way we can be sure that the compilation won t end up claiming the assembly cannot be erased   echo PreBuildEvents  echo    TargetPath  is  1 echo    TargetFileName  is  2  echo    TargetDir  is  3    echo    TargetName  is  4  set dir C  temp LockedAssemblies  if not exist  dir   mkdir  dir    REM   delete all assemblies moved not really locked by a process del   dir      q  REM   assembly file   exe    dll  -  pdb file and eventually  xml file  documentation  are concerned REM   use  random  to let coexists several process that hold several versions of locked assemblies if exist   1   move   1    dir   2 locked  random   if exist   3 4 pdb  move   3 4 pdb    dir   4 pdb locked random   if exist   3 4 xml locked  del   dir   4 xml locked random    REM Code with Macros REM   if exist    TargetPath    move    TargetPath    C  temp LockedAssemblies   TargetFileName  locked  random   REM   if exist    TargetDir   TargetName  pdb  move  C  temp LockedAssemblies   TargetName  pdb     TargetDir   TargetName  pdb locked random   REM   if exist    TargetDir   TargetName  xml locked  del  C  temp LockedAssemblies   TargetName  xml locked random    REM PreBuildEvent code REM     SolutionDir  BuildProcess PreBuildEvents bat     TargetPath       TargetFileName       TargetDir       TargetName    REM References  REM   http   www hanselman com blog ManagingMultipleConfigurationFileEnvironmentsWithPreBuildEvents aspx REM   http   stackoverflow com a 2738456 27194 REM   http   stackoverflow com a 35800302 27194   The script needs to be invoked from each VS project pre build event     SolutionDir  BuildProcess PreBuildEvents bat     TargetPath       TargetFileName       TargetDir       TargetName

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I ran into this as well   It turns out that I had been testing with a service which I had built myself and which was running out the of the    bin release directory of one of the projects in my solution   I had got the service running  but I forget to stop uninstall it before returning to testing   As a result  it was holding on to one of the dlls that I reference and which needed to be moved  automatically as a dependency  from one project s bin release subfolders to another    Stopping the service solved the problem

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It seems that by change the assembly name of a project fixes the problem   So instead of this    I change it to this    Notice that I just changed it from Increment and Recall to Increment Recall  I just removed the spaces  It is now working fine to me

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I faced the same problem on VS 2012 Version 11 0 60610 01 Update 3 on Windows 8  There were no designer windows open and the project was a simple console application   The removal of the vshost process accessing the file does not work most of the time since the process isn t accessing the file   The simplest workaround that works and takes the least amount of time is to remove the project from the solution  build another project in the solution and then add the original back    It s an irritant and waste of time but it s the least expensive of all the other options that I know of   Hope this helps

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Exception  In some cases in Visual Studio when you  Build    Rebuild  on top of running IISExpress you faced with this Exception      Unable to copy file  obj Debug YourProjectName dll  to bin YourProjectName dll   the process cannot access the file    bin YourProjectName dll  because it is being used by another   process   Solution   Right click on web project that needs to build  Click on properties  Select Build Events Tab on the left side  In Pre-build events command line paste these 2 line     tasklist  fi  imagename eq iisexpress exe   find      gt  nul if errorlevel 1 taskkill  f  im  iisexpress exe     You are good 2 GO

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If you re running into this issue using Visual Studio Code  vsCode  and or you re sticking to terminal commands  the clean command will delete the build files and typically fix the issue described  dotnet clean  Then  you can return to running  dotnet build  or dotnet run

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If you are debugging T4 templates  then this happens all the time  My solution  before MS fixes this  would be just to kill this process   Task Manager --  User --  T4VSHostProcess exe   This process only comes up when you debug a T4 template  not when you run one

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Killing the process w3wp exe  IIS  will often solve this  Generally  you can know the process that has the lock on the file by navigating to the bin folder and trying to delete it  The error message that will pop up  in case another process is using it  will contain the name of the process that needs to be killed

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I had the same problem and I tried so many different ways mentioned here but none of them worked for me  the only solution that worked for me     Removing the READ ONLY Property from DEBUG folder of my solution and  Adding this to Build events  if exist    TargetPath  locked  del    TargetPath  locked  if not exist    TargetPath  locked  if exist    TargetPath   move    TargetPath      TargetPath  locked

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I didn t realize I still had my debugger attached and was trying to build in the same Visual Studio instance  Once I stopped the debugger I was able to build

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In my case it was a permission problem  I had to run Visual Studio as administrator

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the  vhost exe is a debugger process  so it appears that the process being debugged hasn t closed properly  Chances are you have a bug that s keeping it alive and are not stopping the debug process correctly - there are options to detach from the process when you click  stop debugging  instead of actually killing the debugger so maybe you have that set   But that s the problem - the file you re trying to copy over is locked  ie still being used  by the OS so its preventing the copy  Ensure that file is free and you ll be able to copy

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I get this every time I deploy if I edit a Xaml page on WP8 using VS2012   I need to either not open a Xaml page or use process explorer to kill the process XDesProc exe   If you are getting this error then I recommend using process explorer to see what is happening  even if it s a different problem   Just find the process  WeinGartner WeinCad exe  and it should show the process and handle accessing the file  well at least when the killing the vhost file doesn t fix the issue

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I periodically have this problem as well in Visual Studio 2010  Closing Visual Studio  deleting the bin and obj directories  and re-launching will fix it for one build  Then the problem returns  I have tried every other answer on this thread and none worked for me  The only thing that resolves this permanently for me is to go to the project settings and turn off  Enable the Visual Studio hosting process   build  turn it back on  and build again

[c#] Visual Studio "Could not copy" .... during build

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