arcgis desktop - Intersect (analysis) of polygons generating empty output

I have previously asked a question on determining the area of polygons with another polygon boundary.

Determining the area of each polygon within a polygon boundary?

I came to the conculsion that using an intersect function was the most feasible option in determing the area of polygons within the 1000m boundary. Whenever I run an intersect with all the polygon shapefiles (there is about 40) within the Polygon boundary it generates an empty output.

I have set the coordinate system for each shapefile and the data frame to the same one. I'm using ArcGIS 10.1 with an ArcInfo license.

What would be the cause of this empty output generated?

WARNING 000117: warning empty output generated.

Answer

Follow these steps:

1. Visually verify that the polygons do indeed intersect using Arcmap


2. Restart Arcmap


3. Ensure that features are not selected


4. Re-run the intersect