VisualStudio2010 Debugging - The process cannot access the file ... because it is being used by another process

I have found this issue very easy to reproduce, and the fix for me is a variation on Richard Fors' answer. If I have a UserControl open in the designer, run the debugger, and then edit the UserControl, the subsequent rebuild will fail. If I close the UserControl before running the debugger I never get this error, so I just make sure to close the designer window before hitting F5.

As of October 2012, I still have that issue so the VS 2010 SP1 didn't solve the problem. What I did, and worked consistently, was disabling the hosting process in the projects.

To disable the hosting process:

.  Open a project in Visual Studio.

.  On the Project menu, click Properties.

.  Click the Debug tab.

.  Clear the Enable the Visual Studio hosting process check box.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms185330(v=vs.100).aspx

You can try to kill the vshost.exe process:

taskkill /F /IM "Arrowgrass Reports.vshosts.exe"

You might also be lucky and simply be able to move the file in question. Moving the file can be done by adding the following lines of code to the pre-build event of your project:

if exist "$(TargetPath).locked" del "$(TargetPath).locked"
if exist "$(TargetPath)" if not exist "$(TargetPath).locked" move "$(TargetPath)" "$(TargetPath).locked"