Eclipse says Workspace in use or cannot be created chose a different one How do I unlock a workspace

Question

When I start  Eclipse says  Workspace Cannot Be Locked    Could not launch the product because the associated workspace is currently in use by another Eclipse application   or    Workspace in use or cannot be created  chose a different one      But I know it isn t   How do I  unlock  it

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Another problem is when eclipse doesn t have write access to your src folder  Change the security permission and make sure  Authenticated Users  are added with all permissions checked but Full Control  amp  Special Permissions

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deleting logs and  lock didn t work but  -clean option fixed it for me

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There is another case where the path to the workspace may not exist  e g   if you have imported preferences from another workspace  then some imported workspace addresses may appear in your  open workspace  dialog  then if you didn t pay attention to those addresses  you would get the exact same error once you tried to open them

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I have observed one case when eclipse when in forced quit  or Alt-f2 xkilled in linux  an attempt to immediately open eclipse shows that error  Even the metadat  lock file is not present in that case   However it starts working after a span of about two minutes

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Another possible cause of the    Workspace in use or cannot be created  chose a different one    issue is that the real path to your workspace may have changed   In my case  the real location of the workspace had changed  but I had used a symlink to make it look like it was in the same location   I saw errors in logs indicating that eclipse was looking at the previous  real  location  as opposed to following the symlink  and this was causing the errors   In my case  I just moved the workspace back to its old location

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Just delete the  lock file in the  metadata directory in your eclipse workspace directory    Precaution - If you delete the  metadata folder  all preference will be deleted

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Another possible case if none works is to see that there is a running Java application   may  be your previous open and close has left unkilled java instances     Do look for any java instance is running if there are two at least you need to kill one But  most of the time i kill any java running    because that java is using the work space earlier and still will if don t kill it  Change another work space in case if you want a multiple IDE to use and work on diffrent or same project   but you should import project form workspace after you open your IDE

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I faced the same problem  but for some reasons the  lock file in workspace was not getting deleted  Even creating a new workspace was also getting locked  So what I did was cleaning the windows temp folder  the  PREFETCH  folder and  TEMP  locations  Restart the system and then it allowed to delete the  lock file  Maybe it will help someone

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I had this error after I restarted the system  after a long time  Normally I just make it sleep   Found out that once I mounted the drives  by clicking and opening it  where project folder is located  and relaunching eclipse  solved the issue for me   PS  I m an ubuntu user

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Running eclipse in Administrator Mode fixed it for me  You can do this by  Right Click  -  Run as Administrator on the eclipse exe from your install dir   I was on a working environment with win7 machine having restrictive permission  I also did remove the  lock and  log files but that did not help  It can be a combination of all as well that made it work

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Start Eclipse with the option -Dosgi locking none   I got the trick here and it works   Don t do this unless you know nobody can work on the same file at the same time

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Choosing a  different one  is actually a pretty easy solution     I had been running Eclipse as an administrator  sudo eclipse from the command line  because the  workspace  folder was throwing the Workspace in use or cannot be created    error  and running as administrator seemed to be the only solution that fixed it      A coworker  working on this same issue with me  wanted to run Eclipse by clicking on an icon   So when he ran Eclipse  and the dialogue box came up with the choose your workspace  he just added a  2  to the end of  workspace      This created  a new folder    workspace2    Eclipse ran fine with that  and I haven   t had any of the locking problems since

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The reason this was happening to me  with Photon  was easily fixed by changing an Eclipse general preference   Window - gt  Preferences - gt  General  Uncheck   Always run in background    Once you make that change  whenever you shutdown Eclipse  it will no longer leave the javaw exe process running in the background  I   m guessing this is a bug in Photon  or a bug with using the Amazon Corretto OpenJDK version of Java with Eclipse  that will one day be fixed

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I don t know what s the wrong but I solved by creating a directory directly in c drive c  dev  instead of from my home folder  c  users me dev   But I don t have to thinks about it  In my case  it is fresh eclipse unziped instance  I am not able to see  matadata folder in eclipse folder  By God grace  I solved

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The answer  Boris gave is correct 99  of the time  however it can also happen if you open the workspace in an older version of Eclipse  A workspace imported into created with Juno will throw this error when opened in Galileo

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Here are a few steps to solve it the no  4 step is works for me     Delete  log files along  metadata folder  Check the current user permission make sure to check the full control checkbox click apply then OK  If you run system drive defragmentation or maintenance before you run eclipse editor sometimes original file path are not in their respective path to make sure run  previous version  time before your system maintenance of your drive where the eclipse workbench or something similar to this was saved  This last option is works for me  Check the drive letter of your current drive where the code editor was saved  If something unusual e g before your maintenance your drive letter is K then after defragment or maintenance   The drive letter is now L hence you should change the drive letter to its original one that is K  to do this click the ff  Open control panel System  amp  security Administrative tools Computer management Disk management in disk mngt choose the Drive example L then right click   change drive letter  amp  path   click remove   then ok  open it again then   click add and   choose your original drive letter for that drive then click ok  If you use your computer for a long period of time do restart first to refresh everything

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Another all-too-common reason for this problem is if you attempt to load a directory on a drive that is no longer connected  For example  Say you program in C  Code Java  but occasionally work off of a flash drive  H  Code Java  If you do not have the drive connected it can be easy to believe you are trying to load a valid directory without noticing your typo

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I ve seen 3 other fixes so far    in  metadata   rm  lock file  if  1 doesn t work  try killing the process javaw exe etc  then rm  lock file if  1 and  2 don t work  try rm  log file in  metadata   and double check  plugin    This has always worked for me  relocate  metadata   open and close eclipse  then overwrite  metadata back   The solution boils down to cleaning up the  metadata folder

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It will occur when you not closed eclipse exe correctly    Open Task manager- End task your eclipse- Now open eclipse exe it will work   Hope its help someone

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For Mac Users   It could be that another instance of eclipse is running in the background  If so  use either Force Quit eclipse or    ps -ef  grep eclipse kill -9 pid   to all the eclipse instances  and start the new workspace

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Go to TaskManager Right Click in the Task Bar  and select Processess menu bar and select eclipse exe and Click EndProcess

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i was faced this issue when ever the eclipse is not closed  kill eclipse process the from task manager or computer power off   i was tried below steps  it worked for me   1  Remove the file names start with   fileTable  from this folder      C  eclipse configuration org eclipse osgi manager   2  Remove the log files like text files start with numeric names from this folder     C  eclipse configuration   3  Open Command prompt cmd  navigate to this folder      C  eclipse   type below command     eclipse clean start

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At times  if you are on Windows  you may not see all the processes - or the culprit process in Task manager  I had to click  Show process from all users  and there was this java exe that I had to kill in order to get back my workspace

[eclipse] Eclipse says: “Workspace in use or cannot be created, chose a different one.” How do I unlock a workspace?

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