Could not obtain the lock

[David Carlson]

I believe that others will concur that you do not have write permission in
the folder containing that data file.  Is your user name User?

That is also why GnuCash failed to create a .LCK file.  You need to make a
new folder on your desktop, call it Moira_GnuCash_Data or similar and use
file manager to save a copy of the data file there.  Alternatively, when
you have the file open in GnuCash just do a Save As... into a new folder on
your desktop.  You will not be able to save any data until you do that.

David C


On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 8:32 PM, <moirag at web.net> wrote:

> David...
>
> > The lock file is always in the same folder as the data file and it always
> > has the same name as the data file with the suffix .LCK  Unless you are
> > doing something very unusual, the files will be visible in your file
> > explorer as long as you put them somewhere in your user folder on your
> > local machine ('C' Drive) or on a removable device.  If you are using
> > cloud storage, you may have a problem with the configuration.
>
> I looked in the same folder as the data file, there is no .LCK file there.
>
> > In Windows the user name matters when there are more than one user on
> the same machine, but on single user machines it does not matter if the
> files were created in another machine under a different user name.
>
> Then that is not the problem; these files were created in another file
> under a different user name; both machines were single user.
>
> > What do you mean by "it asks me to save the file as a new file"?  Have
> you been clicking on "File > Save" and immediately getting a message to
> "Save As.." or does the "Save" button go grey and the asterisk that was
> in front of the file name in the top banner disappear?. If you do get
> the "Save As..." prompt, just save it to a different folder under your
> desktop temporarily until you can find the problem.
>
> The actual error message I get when I click Save is "Could not make a
> backup of the file C:\Users\User\Documents\blahblahblah.gnucash"
>
> I then click "Close" (the only option in the error window), and it open
> the Save window.  Regardless of how or where I save it, I get an error
> message "GnuCash could not write to C:\Users\User\Documents\Temporary
> Gnucash\blahblahblah.gnucash. That database may be on a read-only file
> system, or you may not have write permission for the directory." If I try
> to overwrite the existing file, I get the warning message that it alredy
> exists, and after that "Could not make a backup of the file
> C:\Users\User\Documents\blahblahblah.gnucash" The changes don't save.
>
> > Exactly how do you exit the program?  Are the transactions you entered
> > recently reappearing when you re-open the file?  Do you start the
> program by clicking on the program icon or on the data file icon or a
> shortcut to the data file?
>
> I exit by clicking on Save, and then when that is done, either clicking on
> the X in the upper left corner or with File - Quit. Same results either
> way.  I start the program from the descktop shortcut, but get the same
> results when I open it from the Start menu.
>
> Help!
>
>
>