This error occurs when the article spiking fails because the spiking of article elements failed previously. There may be multiple reasons for the spike of the article elements could fail. For example: the elements remained in use by some user, or GN4 application crashed and it was never recovered?

To correct this error

Use the Locks main tab in Fred to investigate about the optional locks, or identify the Ids of the article elements and then unlock them or spike them manually by means of the srv4 spike command.