Git rename from index.lock to index failed

Question

Using the GitHub Windows client I did a sync to pull remote changes to my local machine, but before finishing the sync, I ran out of disk space and the sync failed.

Answer 1

I was seeing this Rename from '.git/index.lock'... message when attempting to execute

git checkout -b my-branch

The fix for me was to run the command line as admin.

Specifically I was using the excellent cmder application as a non-admin, which resulted in the rename message appearing. By running cmder as an admin, then performing the checkout again, it worked fine.