Catalog vanished?

[AliSmith]

Hi,

I had a catalog all setup exactly as I wanted it, then suddenly after one machine bootup, it has disappeared! Is there any way to find out where it has gone, or do I have to go through the process of rebuilding it? I assume it's held in the file catalog.dat? Could that have got corrupted? It appears to be the same size as the file CatalogDefault.dat, but the contents are not the same. Any ideas?

REgards

Ali Smith

[admin]

Hi and welcome,

the size is not a good way to determine what went wrong because the Catalog is not shrunk when items are deleted (for performance reasons). They are just kind of marked as "gone" (however, there's no way to get tham back).

No idea what went wrong. I only can say it should not happen and does not happen usually (otherwise I would have heard about it).

Don

[serendipity]

Hi,

I had a catalog all setup exactly as I wanted it, then suddenly after one machine bootup, it has disappeared! Is there any way to find out where it has gone, or do I have to go through the process of rebuilding it? I assume it's held in the file catalog.dat? Could that have got corrupted? It appears to be the same size as the file CatalogDefault.dat, but the contents are not the same. Any ideas?

REgards

Ali Smith

Welcome,
Yes, this is strange. Asking the obvious, did you change any of the default settings like uncheck the "Save settings on exit" or was the machine bootup done when XY was still running?

[AliSmith]

Hi,

I have the Save Settings on Exit tickbox ticked, but in fact I also had the Minimise to Tray on X Close box ticked, so it never really exitted during the life of the session! What may have happened is that my machine crashed or I had to press Reset during closedown, which happens from time to time (yes, even with W7!). So I guess this may have corrupted the Catalog? I have set the Minimize to Tray on X Close box unticked now, and so far so good...

But sometimes I also find that XYPlorer just stops responding, and can't be killed even from Task Manager. I have no idea why this happens, but it usually means a reboot (again usually with a press of the Reset button). The XYPlorer window is just blank, as if it's trying to build the file list but can't quite make it! I don't know if that's relevant, but thought I'd mention it.

Ali Smith

[admin]

Thanks for the info. I've never seen this.

[AliSmith]

Wierd, but I just downloaded the new version 8.80 and lo and behold my catalog has reappeared as it was before it disappeared! Might be helpful?

Ali Smith.

[serendipity]

Hi,

I have the Save Settings on Exit tickbox ticked, but in fact I also had the Minimise to Tray on X Close box ticked, so it never really exitted during the life of the session! What may have happened is that my machine crashed or I had to press Reset during closedown, which happens from time to time (yes, even with W7!). So I guess this may have corrupted the Catalog? I have set the Minimize to Tray on X Close box unticked now, and so far so good...

OK, so the catalog missing could have been due to windows crashing or not shutting down gracefully. Which means you will lose your settings in most programs unless they have autosave feature. So that explain your missing catalog.

But sometimes I also find that XYPlorer just stops responding, and can't be killed even from Task Manager. I have no idea why this happens, but it usually means a reboot (again usually with a press of the Reset button). The XYPlorer window is just blank, as if it's trying to build the file list but can't quite make it! I don't know if that's relevant, but thought I'd mention it.

And this happens randomly or during a file operation or accessing network files etc. It would help if you find a trend before such freeze.

[admin]

Wierd, but I just downloaded the new version 8.80 and lo and behold my catalog has reappeared as it was before it disappeared! Might be helpful?

Ali Smith.

That's even more weird. Do you live near a wormhole?

[AliSmith]

I hadn't considered the option of a wormhole, but maybe that makes sense . This morning when I booted up, XYPlorer is now showing the rebuilt Catalog , not the original one I lost. Even though I saved the catalog specifically yesterday, and did a Save All Settings as well!

[admin]

I hadn't considered the option of a wormhole, but maybe that makes sense . This morning when I booted up, XYPlorer is now showing the rebuilt Catalog , not the original one I lost. Even though I saved the catalog specifically yesterday, and did a Save All Settings as well!

Well, this is clearly beyond the laws of nature. Keep watching it, you are after something exciting...

[graham]

I like the wormhole suggestion the best but another thought - with win7 - where is XY and files located? - I decided to put all files c:\users\graham\xyplorer where it is not influenced by win7 but may be still a wormhole or blackhole nearby Despite other win7 oddities XY behaves exceptionally well - and so far has not corrupted any catalogues.

[AliSmith]

OK, I'll try that option, graham, and reinstall XYplorer in a directory other than Program Files (x86) where it is at the moment. Will report back on wormholes and other extraneous anomolies as and when...

[panorama]

Exactly the same thing has happened to me.

I was running v. 9.9 on Win 7 pro (have since updated to 10). Our corporate network was having some issues and poof no more catalog. Anyway I can get it back? I'd been building it for years.


Thank you.

PS Hope posting this here is the right thing to do etiquette-wise

[admin]

Exactly the same thing has happened to me.

I was running v. 9.9 on Win 7 pro (have since updated to 10). Our corporate network was having some issues and poof no more catalog. Anyway I can get it back? I'd been building it for years.

Are you saying the file catalog.dat is existing and correctly loaded but the contents are empty? In that case the data are gone. You should resort to your backup. If you don't have a backup, nothing can be done.
I cannot say why your catalog vanished but a bug as cause seems very unlikely (it would have surfaced years ago).

I will add catalog.dat to the auto-backupped files.