The problem behaviour is as follows:

• An attachment cannot be deleted, as attempting to do so causes the message "You cannot delete this attachment because it is reserved"
• The Reservation column on the data grid is empty for that attachment

In this case the attachment is reserved, but the database record that maintains the reservation is missing ID and timestamp data. 

Admin Discard will forcibly remove the reservation, but may cause problems if a user wants to continue working with their reserved copy. 

Solution

The script Pentana Audit - Populate missing Checkout.CreatedBy fields from Checkout_Version.sql will reinstate the user details of the person who has the file reserved, so that they can either commit or discard.

To run:

• stop the Pentana Audit robot service
• stop the Pentana application pools
• if Retain is used, stop the Retain Server service
• back up the Pentana database and verify
• if Retain is used, back up the Retain database and verify
• run this script - it should run without error
• restart the Pentana app pools
• restart the Pentana Audit robot service
• if Retain is used, restart the Retain service
• verify effect of change

Root cause and further investigation

This issue can appear as a result of a temporary problem with the main service.

The issue is cleared after a restart of the service’s application pool, but there may be additional  issues  that need investigating – more information here:  Pentana Audit: Logged error "Could not fetch business rules because query of type Behavior could not be executed"