Error: The path specified cannot be used at this time.

Sometimes when doing application management tasks, you run into an error where the page stops creating your Web Application or other management task and instead throws this error:

Error: The path specified cannot be used at this time.

Upon digging a little deeper to ascertain the cause of the problem, I noticed that these 3 errors were being thrown on a consistent basis.

Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt. Event ID: 6398.

Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt. Event ID: 7076.

Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt. Event ID: 6482.

I found this KB that related to this error, but I didn't want to install it on the server directly. So here are the things I did to resolve this.

1. Installed the latest critical updates from Windows Update on the servers.
2. Re-started the servers in the farm for those to take effect.

This fixed the problem temporarily. It came back a couple of days later so I restarted the SharePoint timer service. Since then, the error has not come back.

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