Git rename from index.lock to index failed

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. Now I seem to have a bunch of local changes that are actually changes that were being pulled from origin. I tried to run git pull but got:

C:\Users\Tom\SourceLog [master +4 ~26 -0 !]> git pull
Updating b3a86e1..5afd74f
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
        SourceLog.Interface/IChangedFile.cs
        SourceLog.Interface/ILogEntry.cs
        ...
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
        Lib/MSBuildExtensionPack/4.0.6.0/Ionic.Zip.dll
        Lib/MSBuildExtensionPack/4.0.6.0/MSBuild.ExtensionPack.dll
        ...
Aborting

So now I'm trying to discard the local changes but I'm getting:

C:\Users\Tom\SourceLog [master +4 ~26 -0 !]> git checkout -- .
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) y
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) n
fatal: unable to write new index file

How can I clean this up? (I didn't have any local changes before starting the sync.)

Update

Can't seem to reset head..

C:\Users\Tom\SourceLog [master +4 ~0 -0 !]> git reset head
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) y
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) n
error: Could not write new index file.
fatal: Could not reset index file to revision 'head'.

Looks like the following process had a lock on the .git\index file:

ssh-agent.exe
C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Local\GitHub\PortableGit_8810fd5c2c79c73adcc73fd0825f3b32fdb816e7\bin\ssh-agent.exe

I killed the process and ran git reset HEAD and looks like I'm back to normal now.

In my case, this was caused by using the same Git repo from both admin and non-admin command prompts. When last git pull was from admin cmd, the index was created by it, and then non-admin cmd had insufficient permissions to modify it.

My solution was re-creating the index (while keeping the worktree intact):

del .git\index
del .git\index.lock
git reset --mixed head

In my case I had to close the VS code which I opened with code . from a WSL Ubuntu terminal.

It can be a real issue, try to run your Terminal as Administrator instead of user. Worked for me

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.

Git rename from index.lock to index failed

Update

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