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any way to recover a corrupt file?
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| Coder Droid 2005-02-18, 4:21 am |
| I was working on an image, saving as I went. About 30 seconds after my
last successful save, PSP up and died on me. As it went down, it decided
to corrupt my file. Opening the file only gets me "This is not a valid
Paint Shop Pro Image file."
It's about 16MB. Looks like most everything's there: so either the end
got cut off, or there's a checksum error somewhere, or who knows what.
Am I screwed?
--cd
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| Coder Droid 2005-02-18, 4:21 am |
| > It's about 16MB. Looks like most everything's there: so either the end
> got cut off, or there's a checksum error somewhere, or who knows what.
Replying to my own post: aggravatingly enough, the Open dialog box
preview shows the image. Additionally, clicking on "Properties" shows me
everything. It's gotta be something minor ... so close, yet so far.
:(
--cd
| |
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| Coder Droid wrote:
> I was working on an image, saving as I went. About 30 seconds after my
> last successful save, PSP up and died on me.
So, what's the problem?
:-)
Uni
As it went down, it decided
> to corrupt my file. Opening the file only gets me "This is not a valid
> Paint Shop Pro Image file."
>
> It's about 16MB. Looks like most everything's there: so either the end
> got cut off, or there's a checksum error somewhere, or who knows what.
>
> Am I screwed?
>
> --cd
>
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| Fred Hiltz 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| Coder Droid wrote:
> I was working on an image, saving as I went. About 30 seconds
> after my last successful save, PSP up and died on me. As it went
> down, it decided to corrupt my file. Opening the file only gets
> me "This is not a valid Paint Shop Pro Image file."
>
> It's about 16MB. Looks like most everything's there: so either
> the end got cut off, or there's a checksum error somewhere, or
> who knows what.
>
> Am I screwed?
Probably, sad to say. If your system is unstable and you are not in
the habit of saving frequently, you might want to enable Autosave
with File Preferences > Autosave Settings.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com
| |
| Coder Droid 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| > Probably, sad to say. If your system is unstable and you are not in
> the habit of saving frequently, you might want to enable Autosave
> with File Preferences > Autosave Settings.
That's just the thing. I saved it not 30 seconds before the crash!
Right after I saved it, I changed the text of one of my two titles. I
then clicked to edit a gradient, and a dialog box popped up saying
"invalid argument yada yada yada" and the whole ship went down.
The thing is, as it was dying, it wrote out a new file. Why? I have no
idea. I can't imagine any bit of code that detects program failure and
decides to corrupt the last saved file. Thanks guys!
How do I know it wrote a new file? The preview (both in the Open dialog
and in Thumbnail view in explorer) shows the *new* title: the title
change I made AFTER my last save and before the crash.
I was saving this work very frequently. I did everything right.
--cd
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| Coder Droid 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| > I was saving this work very frequently. I did everything right.
I don't suppose this guy is still around. :( Oh, to be so lucky.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.apps.paint-shop-pro
From: "Joe Fromm"
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 11:07:58 -0500
Local: Mon, May 14 2001 9:07 am
Subject: Re: Corrupt PSP File
One of our engineers (Anders - our file format wizard) fixed the file -
the
gradient on the last shape was corrupt, so he converted it to a solid
color.
If you can send me an email address I can mail you the corrected file.
--
Joe Fromm
Senior Software Engineer
Jasc Software, Inc.
| |
| All Things Mopar 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| Coder Droid commented courteously ...
[snip]
> That's just the thing. I saved it not 30 seconds
> before the crash!
[snip]
Sorry to hear about your loss of time and effort, Coder.
How valuable in dollars is this picture to you? If
considerable, maybe because it is the only version you
have of a "once in a lifetime" photo, then you might
looking into a computer geek who specializes in computer
forensics - the art & science of recovering data from a HD
that seemingly is missing or lost or corrupt.
I've no idea what this might cost, but I imagine they work
on an hourly rate. IMHO, it might be possible to at least
recover part of the image, although I'd think it is very
unlikely to get back the PSP-specific things like vectors.
> The thing is, as it was dying, it wrote out a new
> file. Why? I have no idea.
I advise people *not* to do a "save" while Windows is
flakey or about to crash, nor when an app - any kind, not
just PSP - is acting strange and may crash. PSP may have
been in the physical act of writing the last few blocks of
your file to your HD when it hung, thus leaving something
out of the file it needs to reopen it. I don't have
specific technical knowledge of your particular problem
but do know of whence I speak (guess how I know that?
<grin> )
> I was saving this work very frequently. I did
> everything right.
It's too late now for this picture, maybe, but you might
consider a different modus operendi (sp?) in future.
Either save your entire PSP Workspace to different file
names from time-to-time (which will preserve the History
Palette info and all the Tool Options) and/or save the
image to different file names periodically.
I once was working on a 4-part stitch of a scan I did from
a 16 x 20 poster. The total PSP time was around 4 hours,
mainly because I was a newbie at this sort of thing. I was
saving in pspimage format (because I wanted to preserve my
layers) about every 20-30 minutes so as not to have to
start from scratch on such a long project. Murphy just
hates it when you do things to twart his mischief!
That may sound like overkill, but an IT professional once
told me to save my work at least as often as I felt I
didn't want to lose my work, sometimes for me that was
every 5-10 minutes. And, my friend said to use
intermediate file names so there's less chance for any one
of them to be corrupted. Then, when I was done and
satisfied, I just deleted the old stuff.
Whatever, Good Luck!
--
ATM, aka Jerry
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| Fred Hiltz 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| Coder Droid wrote:
> The thing is, as it was dying, it wrote out a new file. Why? I
> have no idea. I can't imagine any bit of code that detects
> program failure and decides to corrupt the last saved file.
That is indeed strange. I saw many crashes during testing, but never
anything like that!
> I was saving this work very frequently. I did everything right.
Yup, and tech support is not going to be able to reproduce this one
to help them fix it.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com
| |
| Carl Frisk 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| I am beginning to suspect that if the gradient angle is 0 crashes occur in some situations. I seem to recall using text
during most of these crashes. I have noticed this 3 separate times now. As a dev when I see 0 as a value I see room
for thousands (OK I'm exaggerating by at least a 100) possibilities for div by 0 errors and the like. I have no idea
what is really happening in code but when I changed the angle to anything other than 0 the crashes went away when using
gradients and text.
--
....Carl Frisk
Anger is a brief madness.
- Horace, 20 B.C.
http://www.carlfrisk.com
"Fred Hiltz" <not@home.ca> wrote in message news:F7qdnW6ci5dbnIvfRVn-pQ@adelphia.com...
> Coder Droid wrote:
>
> That is indeed strange. I saw many crashes during testing, but never
> anything like that!
>
>
> Yup, and tech support is not going to be able to reproduce this one
> to help them fix it.
> --
> Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com
>
| |
|
| On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 08:37:26 -0600, All Things Mopar wrote:
> I advise people *not* to do a "save" while Windows is
> flakey or about to crash, nor when an app - any kind, not
> just PSP - is acting strange and may crash.
Out of habit on Windows I never save over the top of a previous backup
just for that reason. Even if my last backup gets corrupted then I still
have a previous one, which is better than nothing. One of those things you
learn the hard way, sadly :(
> And, my friend said to use
> intermediate file names so there's less chance for any one of them to be
> corrupted. Then, when I was done and satisfied, I just deleted the old
> stuff.
Absolutely! :)
| |
| Fred Hiltz 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| Carl Frisk wrote:
> I am beginning to suspect that if the gradient angle is 0 crashes
> occur in some situations. I seem to recall using text during
> most of these crashes. I have noticed this 3 separate times now.
Hey, perhaps there is a chance we could nail this down. What version
are you running, 9.01.1? If you can recall anything more about
making it happen, I'd like to try it. Were your images large? Many
layers? Unusual text settings? Was the gradient a fill in the text?
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com
| |
| Porter 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
|
"Coder Droid"
either the end[color=darkred]
knows what.[color=darkred]
>
> Replying to my own post: aggravatingly enough, the Open dialog
box
> preview shows the image. Additionally, clicking on
"Properties" shows me
> everything. It's gotta be something minor ... so close, yet so
far.
>
> :(
>
> --cd
Close everything, and reboot your computer. Open PSP, and also
open a Window's Explorer window showing that saved file. Drag
your file over, and try dropping him into your PSP workspace.
Porter
| |
| Kris Zaklika 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| Coder Droid wrote:
>
> I was working on an image, saving as I went. About 30 seconds after my
> last successful save, PSP up and died on me. As it went down, it decided
> to corrupt my file. Opening the file only gets me "This is not a valid
> Paint Shop Pro Image file."
Are you trying to open a PSP 9 format file with PSP 8 or
something similar?
> It's about 16MB. Looks like most everything's there: so either the end
> got cut off, or there's a checksum error somewhere, or who knows what.
>
> Am I screwed?
>
> --cd
| |
| fugitive 2005-02-18, 6:33 pm |
| On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 05:48:06 GMT, "Coder Droid"
<coderdroid@likethiswouldstopspam.hotmail.com> wrote:
>I was working on an image, saving as I went. About 30 seconds after my
>last successful save, PSP up and died on me. As it went down, it decided
>to corrupt my file. Opening the file only gets me "This is not a valid
>Paint Shop Pro Image file."
>
>It's about 16MB. Looks like most everything's there: so either the end
>got cut off, or there's a checksum error somewhere, or who knows what.
>
>Am I screwed?
>
>--cd
>
PSP lost a good one for me too, and I d/l special apps to find files,
and never got it back. But, for a bit of extra insurance, I work and
save a file to D drive, but also keep a copy on C, which is updated
with all major changes, so I'm not completely lost if something bad
happens.
Greg
http://gregsplace.50megs.com
http://www.picturetrail.com/fugitive1
| |
|
|
Coder Droid wrote:
> I was working on an image, saving as I went. About 30 seconds after
my
> last successful save, PSP up and died on me. As it went down, it
decided
> to corrupt my file. Opening the file only gets me "This is not a
valid
> Paint Shop Pro Image file."
>
> It's about 16MB. Looks like most everything's there: so either the
end
> got cut off, or there's a checksum error somewhere, or who knows
what.
>
> Am I screwed?
I'd be happy to try to recover the raster part of the image for you
using my PSP format plugin for Photoshop
(http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/#pspformat) - or you could try it
yourself if you have PS. That plugin tries to ignore everything it's
not interested in, so it might not balk at the particular file
damage... If you don't have Photoshop contact me by e-mail and I'll
attempt it for you.
--Toby
>
> --cd
| |
| Coder Droid 2005-02-18, 11:20 pm |
| > I advise people *not* to do a "save" while Windows is
> flakey or about to crash, nor when an app - any kind, not
> just PSP - is acting strange and may crash.
That's just it. I wasn't. I'd done a successful save and was just
happily back working when it died on me. Who knows: maybe it was doing a
lengthy background save, and I only thought it was done.
But ... hmmmm, that can't be. Because the thumbnail which I *can* view
isn't the version of the file I actually saved. It's the one I was
working on which I hadn't saved at all.
> It's too late now for this picture, maybe, but you might
> consider a different modus operendi (sp?) in future.
> Either save your entire PSP Workspace to different file
> names from time-to-time (which will preserve the History
> Palette info and all the Tool Options) and/or save the
> image to different file names periodically.
To be honest, I do that rather frequently, and have advised others to do
the same many times in the past. But like a lot of things, in the heat
of a creative moment, you just quickly hit Ctrl+S and move on. Higher
brain functions don't always kick in when you want them to.
--cd
| |
| Coder Droid 2005-02-18, 11:20 pm |
| Fred Hiltz wrote:
> Carl Frisk wrote:
>
> Hey, perhaps there is a chance we could nail this down. What version
> are you running, 9.01.1? If you can recall anything more about
> making it happen, I'd like to try it. Were your images large? Many
> layers? Unusual text settings? Was the gradient a fill in the text?
Since I did click to edit a gradient, maybe it's related. Here's what I
was doing.
Version: 9.01 (guess I don't have 9.01.1 yet ... hmmm: thought I patched
it)
The file was 640x640.
There were about eight (?) layers. From the bottom up:
* raster "background" (single-color layer)
* raster layer with a texture, at 20% transparency
* two or three versions of this raster layer, all not-visible
* vector layer with two text objects
* text object one: gradient fill and textured line
* text object two: gradient fill and gradient line
both gradients were factory: Black-white & DuoTone Blue
angle either 90 or 270.
* raster layer on top: a rastered version of text layer
That's pretty close. I was mocking up an album cover. I know everything
that went into it, and could probably reproduct it in a couple hours, so
I'm not overly worried about recovery.
I am now (finally) doing a lot more work with psp9. I'm still not sure
if I like it or not, to be honest. Been using PSP since at least 1993,
but it's just not the same anymore. I guess we'll see.
--cd
| |
| Coder Droid 2005-02-18, 11:20 pm |
| > Close everything, and reboot your computer. Open PSP, and also
> open a Window's Explorer window showing that saved file. Drag
> your file over, and try dropping him into your PSP workspace.
I'll give it a shot. That's quicker than 2 hours of redoing it from
scratch.
Thanks for the tip...
--cd
| |
| Carl Frisk 2005-02-19, 4:29 am |
| Yes 9.01.1
I believe the last time I saw using a gradient for text. I'll try and repeat at least one of the issues and will be
happy to send you anything I can to help. When it crashed I just started over from my last save so it wasn't to
bothersome. Maybe 5 minutes of work lost that was easy to recreate. I almost always have several layers open. I may
have had an art layer open too.
--
....Carl Frisk
Anger is a brief madness.
- Horace, 20 B.C.
http://www.carlfrisk.com
"Fred Hiltz" <not@home.ca> wrote in message news:74idnaRKMLFQgIvfRVn-ow@adelphia.com...
> Carl Frisk wrote:
>
> Hey, perhaps there is a chance we could nail this down. What version
> are you running, 9.01.1? If you can recall anything more about
> making it happen, I'd like to try it. Were your images large? Many
> layers? Unusual text settings? Was the gradient a fill in the text?
> --
> Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com
>
| |
| Coder Droid 2005-02-19, 6:36 pm |
| > I'd be happy to try to recover the raster part of the image for you
> using my PSP format plugin for Photoshop
> (http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/#pspformat)
Just to let everyone know, Toby's plugin recovered every raster layer.
Additionally, I've written my own program that reads a psp file and
prints out all the metadata I care to know about it. It has a ways to go
towards completeness but it's discovered one thing so far: there's
nothing structurally wrong with the file. So the corruption must be
buried within a block. Who knows, maybe it's getting a divide by zero
error on a vector and PSP traps this as "Not a valid PSP file".
I'm already thinking of expanding my program to allow you to delete
layers from an image. Conceptually, this should be straightforward. But
I don't have time at the moment.
If someone's doing a google search a year from now and comes across this
post and needs this utility, it can't hurt to email me then about it.
Who knows, I may just write it someday.
--cd
coderdroid at hotmail dot com
| |
|
| Coder Droid wrote:
>
> Just to let everyone know, Toby's plugin recovered every raster
layer.
> Additionally, I've written my own program that reads a psp file and
> prints out all the metadata I care to know about it. ...
>
> I'm already thinking of expanding my program to allow you to delete
> layers from an image. Conceptually, this should be straightforward.
But
> I don't have time at the moment.
It may be a little simpler just to "extract" each layer into individual
files; that alone could be a useful recovery aid. (And a tiny bit
quicker for the user than trial and error on layer deletion.)
--Toby
>
> If someone's doing a google search a year from now and comes across
this
> post and needs this utility, it can't hurt to email me then about it.
> Who knows, I may just write it someday.
>
> --cd
> coderdroid at hotmail dot com
| |
| Fred Hiltz 2005-02-19, 6:37 pm |
| Coder Droid wrote:
[snip]
> Just to let everyone know, Toby's plugin recovered every raster
> layer. Additionally, I've written my own program that reads a psp
> file and prints out all the metadata I care to know about it. It
> has a ways to go towards completeness but it's discovered one
> thing so far: there's nothing structurally wrong with the file.
CD and Toby, congratulations. I wouldn'a thunk it possible.
I'm going to try over the next few days to make it happen with a
file simple enough to send to tech support.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com
| |
|
| On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 23:38:22 +0000, Coder Droid wrote:
>
> That's just it. I wasn't. I'd done a successful save and was just
> happily back working when it died on me. Who knows: maybe it was doing a
> lengthy background save, and I only thought it was done.
Sure you haven't got hard disk troubles by the way? (or even memory
problems). That could also cause Strange Things to Happen...
Just a thought seeing as this seems to be something of a strange
situation.
cheers
Jules
| |
|
|
Jules wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 23:38:22 +0000, Coder Droid wrote:
>
>
> Sure you haven't got hard disk troubles by the way? (or even memory
> problems). That could also cause Strange Things to Happen...
There's never a bad time to run a memory test: http://www.memtest.org/
And it's usually the last thing people thing of (including me...)
>
> Just a thought seeing as this seems to be something of a strange
> situation.
>
> cheers
>
> Jules
| |
| collar 2006-03-16, 7:04 pm |
| Greetings,
I suppose Active@ Undelete might help you. This is a truly powerful data recovery tool that never failed me before and worked simply great. It's restore methods never failed me before. Give it a try.
http://www.active-undelete.com/ |
|
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