### Please describe the problem. I'm using git-annex v6 in windows and seems `git annex get` fails. Deleting the pointer files and doing a hard reset seems to fix the problem. Another bug report named "v6 repo can not restore files with executable permission" seems to point to the same problem but a little different. [[!retitle "git annex get fails sometimes in v6 repository on Windows"]] ### What steps will reproduce the problem? I have a repo in D:\annex with a file `test` Now I create another repo: $ cd H:\annex $ git init Initialized empty Git repository in H:/annex/.git/ $ git annex init "portable drive" init portable drive Detected a filesystem without fifo support. Disabling ssh connection caching. Detected a crippled filesystem. Enabling direct mode. ok (recording state in git...) $ git annex upgrade upgrade . (v5 to v6...) Upgraded repository out of direct mode. Changes have been staged for all annexed files in this repository; you should run `git commit` to commit these changes. Any other clones of this repository that use direct mode need to be upgraded now, too. ok $ git remote add laptop D:/annex $ git annex sync commit ok pull laptop warning: no common commits remote: Counting objects: 21, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (15/15), done. remote: Total 21 (delta 3), reused 0 (delta 0) Unpacking objects: 100% (21/21), done. From D:/annex * [new branch] git-annex -> laptop/git-annex * [new branch] master -> laptop/master * [new branch] synced/git-annex -> laptop/synced/git-annex * [new branch] synced/master -> laptop/synced/master Already up-to-date. ok (merging laptop/git-annex laptop/synced/git-annex into git-annex...) (recording state in git...) push laptop Counting objects: 8, done. Delta compression using up to 8 threads. Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done. Writing objects: 100% (8/8), 928 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done. Total 8 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0) To D:/annex c1aee82..980dc01 git-annex -> synced/git-annex ok $ git annex get . get test (from laptop...) SHA256E-s14488367--4391729b982439764813156e1bfc12e9626ae89452ab812f5180c376fbd57fc0 14,488,367 100% 63.24MB/s 0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1) (checksum...) git-annex: DeleteFile ".\\test": permission denied (The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.) failed git-annex: get: 1 failed It seems to try to delete the pointer file, but finds the file in use. Maybe fsck is using it? $ cat test /annex/objects/SHA256E-s14488367--4391729b982439764813156e1bfc12e9626ae89452ab812f5180c376fbd57fc0 $ git annex lock lock test git-annex: content not present; cannot lock And `git annex unlock` will do nothing. If you can't reproduce the problem, I'll run the tests for you. ### What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system? Latest compile from source, Windows 8.1