Witcher 3 - mods.settings is being manipulated by another process

[Tromador]

 Windows 11 (23H2). Vortex 1.11.7

I am trying to stop managing Witcher 3. I want to clean it completely back to "factory defaults" and start over. I'm using a complex collection, so it's better to start from clean.

Vortex starts cleaning as I would expect then throws an error claiming that the mods.settings file in Documents is being manipulated by another process.

I checked this in Resource Monitor and the only process with that file handle open is Vortex itself, but this could easily make sense as there are several Vortex processes running. Presumably one has control of the file, whilst another wants it and Vortex is fighting with itself.





If I ignore the error, it immediately pops up again. If I choose to quit, then naturally Vortex just closes.

The only way I have found to actually deal with this is a full manual process:
1 - Delete all the Vortex data from AppData/Roaming and start with an effectively clean Vortex install.
2 - Manually clean the Witcher 3 install.

This is both tedious and means I can't use vortex to manage other games, as I would lose all the necessary metadata for those profiles every time I have to perform a manual reset on Vortex.