Eclipse Build Error "A class file was not written. The project may be inconsistent, if so try refreshing this project and building it"

Question

I have been struggling with a very weird issue that has suddenly popped up on the latest version of Eclipse Classic (4.2.2).

Everytime I try creating or refactoring a class or subclass in any of my projects (all Java) in my Eclipse workspace I get an error at the very top of my class that says

A class file was not written. The project may be inconsistent, if so try refreshing this project and building it

Again, this happens when I create new classes. And even when I rename current classes, then undo the renaming, its totally fine, but changing a single character in the name causes this error to happen for that specific class.

I have Auto Build on, and I tried multiple times to clean and refresh every project as well as restart Eclipse entirely.

I have literally no idea how to even start figuring out how to fix this. The solutions i've found through search didn't help, so i'm hoping I might find any clues here.

Answer 1

In my case, this was caused by the fact that the build output directories were owned by a different user, and Eclipse could not write into them.

Answer 2

I had the same problem and here's how I solved it in the end: It turned out that the disc space on the drive where workspace resides was full.

Silly mistake but worth checking.

Answer 3

I had the same issues, the following worked for me:

1. Right click eclipse then running "as an Administrator"
2. Click Project > Clean.