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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T20:16:53+00:00

I’ve got this error while compiling a big c# solution in Visual Studio 2010.

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I’ve got this error while compiling a big c# solution in Visual Studio 2010.
Each time after compilation I had to delete obj folder of one the projects used by this solution. Otherwise I got the following error:

Could not write to output file '...\obj\Debug\Foo.Bar.dll'
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process

I’ve was looking for a solution all over the Internet and actually found/tried few of them.

For example : a lot of people on dev forums were suggesting not to start the compilation while UserControl (in some other sources From) designer is opened.

Some other people used pre-build scripts for obj folder removal, this particular solution is acceptable, but if the issued project is a widely used library its recompilation will cause recompilation of “parent” projects.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Finally I’ve discovered a solution for this VS2010 (SP1 too) “bug” and I want to share it with stackoverflow users.

    In my case the problem was that csproj file was SELF-REFERENCING the locked '...\obj\Debug\Foo.Bar.dll' file. Crazy I know.
    So I solved this annoying issue by removing the following line from .csproj file:

    <Reference Include="Foo.Bar">
  <HintPath>obj\Debug\Foo.Bar.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>
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