Photoshop 6: Error Could Not Save because file is already in us - Real solutions

[Dan Aguirre]

Hi All,

Have been surfing the forum and I can't seem to find any real world fix to this issue. I think Adobe has really dropped the ball on this. Here is the error:

Could now save as "filename" because the file is already in use or was left open

The machine I am currently using is brand new fresh Windows 2000 (sp4) fresh install of a few applications. I am concerned about this error because it use to occur to me on my old system as well. What I ended up doing was doing a save as and saving. Then I would go back into the folder and delete and rename the file correctly.

Now I just tried to throw out the older file and I cannot even do that and or move the file to a different folder.

There has to be a reason why this is occuring. How come adobe has not addressed this issue. Seems to happen in photoshop 7 as well.

If anyone has a clear answer I would like to hear it.

[Kelli Aylesworth]

There is no fix for it. I'm on Win 98 and I get the same error in PS7. From what I understand, Adobe can't get it to duplicate there, so there is no fix for it. Doesn't make sense to me when it seems like more and moer people are having the same problem on different systems.

The only fix I know of is to only work on one file at a time. If you try to save with multiple files open that's when I get the error.

[YrbkMgr]

The workaround I generally use is, I duplicate the image, close the orginal without saving, then save the duplicate.

[E. Segen]

This kind of thing happens to me from time to time but it has never been exclusive to an Adobe product and often happens in Windows itself when I try to put stuff in the recycle bin - I think the cause for me is similar to that of Michael's...

With this in mind, I think this is more of a Windows problem than a Photoshop problem which would probably explain why Adobe has not "addressed" it.

[Lawrence Hudetz]

No, I fully investigated it with MS, and they claimed that it would take a collaboration between MS and Adobe to fix it. Hasn't happened. They took 2 weeks setting up a test bench trying to dupe the problem and could not.

The problem is locked handles. If you unlock the handle, it will close. to do that, go to ;
<http://www.sysinternals.com> and download (free) the "Process Exploror" utility. Then use it to search for and unlock the handle. The search is simple. Be sure "Handle is selected in the menu, then hit CTRL F and type in the file name that is locked. It will show you where it is and you can instruct it to unlock.

I have found multiple files locked at the same time. If you have a folder for your images, when you have a locked file, type in the folder name, and all locked handles in that folder will be revealed.

A pain, but workable.

So far as I can tell, it is a conflict with the "eye" icon. I disabled it in the registry, and now I don't have the eye identifying a .psd file but I also do not have locked files any more.

[dave milbut]

that's the psicon.dll file that handles that icon (and info in windows explorer). if you rename that file to something like psicon.old it should solve the problem, but as larry said, you lose the icon and the info in explorer.

[Lawrence Hudetz]

Right, you lose the thumbnails by renaming psicon.dll.

I am no expert on coaching a registry change, so I'll leave that to others. With the registry change, you lose the icon gut not the thumbnail.