Solving the “Media is Write Protected” Docker Error (Sitecore XM Cloud on Windows)

-

While working on a Sitecore XM Cloud container setup locally on Windows, I encountered a baffling error:


docker: Error response from daemon: FSCTL_EXTEND_VOLUME \\?\Volume{2072a458-5396-496e-9e16-805157429bf3}: The media is write protected.


The error occurred during container start-up and prevented Sitecore instances from launching correctly. It halted all local development — Docker containers wouldn't mount correctly, and no configuration changes helped.

❌ What Didn’t Work

I tried multiple things, but none resolved the issue:

  • Restarting Docker Desktop

  • Resetting Docker volumes

  • Rebuilding containers

  • Removing Docker data folder

  • Reinstalling Docker (latest version)

  • Changing permissions on mounted volumes

Nothing worked.

🔍 Root Cause

After researching, I discovered the issue was introduced in recent versions of Docker Desktop (v4.38+) on Windows. These versions had changes that caused volume mounting issues, especially on Windows filesystem-backed containers.


✅ The Fix: Downgrade Docker Desktop

Here’s the process that finally resolved the issue:

1. Completely Uninstall Docker (via PowerShell): you can use below PS script to remove docker completely 

# Run as Administrator

# Stop Docker if running
Write-Host "Stopping Docker Desktop..."
Stop-Process -Name "Docker Desktop" -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Stop-Service -Name "com.docker.service" -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

# Uninstall Docker Desktop via Win32_Product (may take a few seconds)
Write-Host "Uninstalling Docker Desktop..."
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "Docker*" } | ForEach-Object { $_.Uninstall() }

# Remove Docker folders
$pathsToRemove = @(
    "$env:ProgramData\Docker",
    "$env:ProgramData\DockerDesktop",
    "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Docker",
    "$env:APPDATA\Docker",
    "$env:USERPROFILE\.docker"
)

foreach ($path in $pathsToRemove) {
    if (Test-Path $path) {
        Write-Host "Removing $path..."
        Remove-Item -Path $path -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    }
}

# Optional: Remove Docker networking leftovers (HNS networks)
Write-Host "Cleaning up HNS Networks..."
Get-HNSNetwork | Remove-HNSNetwork -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

# Optional: Remove Docker's Windows Firewall rules
Write-Host "Removing Docker-related firewall rules..."
Get-NetFirewallRule | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -like "*Docker*" } | Remove-NetFirewallRule -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Write-Host "Docker Desktop and all related data have been removed."


2. Download & Install Docker Desktop v4.37.1

  • Get the stable v4.37.1 release from Docker’s Release Notes

  • Install it and restart your machine

After this, all Sitecore containers came up successfully — no more “media is write protected” errors!


🧠 Takeaways

  • This was not a Sitecore CLI or container configuration issue — it was entirely related to Docker Desktop engine compatibility.

  • New Docker versions can sometimes break container mounts on Windows (NTFS).

  • Always keep a list of known-working versions for stable environments (especially with complex setups like Sitecore + Docker).



 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Resolved: Docker Not Starting with WSL2 - Here's the Fix

-
Image
Recently, I encountered an issue where Docker Desktop wasn’t starting properly on my Windows machine despite WSL2 being installed. After spending a good amount of time debugging and researching, I found the root cause and resolved it. I'm sharing this here in hopes that it might help someone else facing the same issue. Problem: Docker Desktop was failing to start and showed errors related to WSL2 or Hyper-V, such as: checking if isocache exists: CreateFile \\wsl$\docker-desktop-data\isocache\: The network name cannot be found. OR running WSL command wsl.exe --mount --bare --vhd <path-to-vhdx>: ... The usage help output is shown instead of execution.   Despite having WSL2 installed, Docker remained stuck or threw exceptions. Root Cause: WSL2 was installed on the machine, but its required Windows features were not enabled . Resolution Steps: Here is the step-by-step guide to fix this: ✅ 1. Check if Virtualization is Enabled Open Task Manager > Performance Tab > CPU Ensu...
Read more

Deleting solr documents from Solr Admin

-
Image
  Brief Introduction As we all knows many of the biggest websites on the internet use Solr as their search and navigation engine because it is extremely dependable. It offers centralised configuration, automated failover and recovery, distributed indexing, replication with load-balanced querying, and more. But sometimes while using it we face duplicates issues on to the sites search pages with broken image links which could not be resolved by either re-indexing the content tree/item in master/web databases or publish/unpublish the item/tree. when we query into the solr admin we found there were duplicates present into the respective cores. so below the steps you may follow to delete the respective document directly from the desired index.  Step 1 : Go to the respective solr server which you have configured for you sitecore instance for example http://localhost:8984/solr/#/ Step 2 : Select the respective core(from core selector dropdown) in which you want to delete the dup...
Read more