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I'm trying to run the geoprocessing tool "Dissolve" on a single feature class in a File GDB, yet I'm getting the error 999999 "the operation was attempted on an empty geometry", but there are no empty geometries (they all have area greater then zero), and for some reason the same tool on the same GDB seems to work on a different computer.

I've checked any possible differences in the ArcCatalog settings or in the Environment variables and couldn't find any. Also tried repairing the feature class's geometries, splitting multipolygons into single polygons, deleting relativly small features or features with a lot of vertices. Did not help.

Anyone know what may cause this problem?

Chris W
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Vitalym
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    You might find some advice here: http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/2482/dissolve-not-working-in-arcgis-10?rq=1 – Jan Šimbera May 17 '15 at 18:59
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    Is a third machine available to test? The next two things that come to mind after what you've tried are corrupt user profiles or installs. – Chris W May 17 '15 at 19:45
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    See if Environments- Processing extent covers the area – FelixIP May 18 '15 at 02:07
  • I think this is most likely to be due to running out of RAM. I recommend using the Task Manager to watch whether it gets exhausted on the offending machine while not doing so on the working one. Adding RAM to the offending machine may make a solution possible for a few hundred dollars -0 but there is no guarantee. – PolyGeo May 18 '15 at 10:22
  • @PolyGeo Since Dissolve uses tiling and won't create polygons larger than the machine can handle, I wouldn't expect that to be an issue or for it to throw a different error. Unless of course there's already a polygon in there that the machine can't handle, and the tool then reads it as empty. Investigation/comparison of the two machine specs would definitely be worthwhile though. – Chris W May 18 '15 at 20:51
  • @ChrisW The asker has not told us the version being used, and I think there has been work done on it since, but the symptoms described remind of some I encountered from Dissolve in the 9.3-10.1 time frame. – PolyGeo May 18 '15 at 22:10

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You do not mention the version of ArcGIS for Desktop that you are using so I will assume that it may be something earlier than 10.2. The symptoms you describe remind of some similar errors that I encountered from Dissolve in the 9.3-10.1 time frame

I think this is most likely to be due to running out of RAM.

I recommend using the Task Manager to watch whether it gets exhausted on the offending machine. Then doing the same on the working machine to see whether more RAM remains available through to completion.

Adding RAM to the offending machine may make a solution possible for a few hundred dollars, but there is no guarantee, so I recommend testing before committing to that as a way forward.

PolyGeo
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