Buffering continuously throws error "Background Server Threw an Exception" (Error 001143). Why?

Question

I have written a code to create 1 meter buffers for features of converted feature classes (from rasters). I want to dissolve by the field "Class" so that I will have significantly smaller datasets to work with because the converted feature classes are far to large to do much with. I was able to do the first one using the GUI so it is possible but when I try to run my code I get error 001143. The error does not pop up right away, instead I see it about an hour after execution (the first file is pretty big). I do get the message "[file] is ready for buffer" (Line 13). The error message says the problem is in line 17 which is when I execute the buffer. Are my buffer parameters incorrect? I disabled background processing but nothing changed. I am happy to hear any suggestions and answer questions that you may have.

import os
arcpy.env.workspace = r"C:\Data\ConvertedPolygons.gdb"
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
arcpy.env.addOutputsToMap = False
polygdb = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()
for fc in polygdb:
    name = fc.split(".")[0]
    if "Test" in name:
        print fc + " was skipped"
    elif "merge" in name:
        print fc + " was skipped"
    else:
        print fc + " ready for buffer"
        outws = r"C:\Data\BufferedPoly.gdb"
        outfc = name + "_buff" 
        outfile = os.path.join(outws, outfc)
        arcpy.Buffer_analysis(fc, outfile, "1 Meter", "FULL", "ROUND", "LIST", "Class" )

Answer 1

Looks like you're running out of memory on with the size of your dataset. In that case, it looks like you'll need to reduce your data somehow. Resample raster? or divide your feature classes up somehow. or find a bigger machine to run these processes on. Are there 10 million polygons? That's a lot of vertices to deal with then.

goodluck.

Answer 2

After doing a bit of forum research, it appears you might be bumping into a few things.

1. Restart the machine (worth a shot)
2. Turn off background geoprocessing (You've done this)
3. Check the name of any output/input files for any tools

I would maybe put a print statement after the assignment of the "outfile" variable

print outfile

Take a look at the structure of the final name after the join, and see if there are anything like hyphens or special characters and spaces in there. This can cause errors to take place for some of the tools, so its good to work those out.