Help/Guidance Please?!

[giametti]

My large database has been acting up for a while.

 

Symptoms:

Frequent crashes (Filemaker has quit unexpectedly). Sometimes as many as 5-6 times a day. Sometimes not for a while. Occurring a lot since I upgraded to FMA 13 in January.

Recent file not closed errors. ("Filename" is currently in use and cannot be opened...) or ( The primary file, "Filename" is either not part of this application, is damaged, or is already open.) These errors have only been happening for the past several days.

 

Background:

I'm a professional furnituremaker who has used Filemaker to run my business since Filemaker 3. It's grown A LOT since then in function and scope. It keeps my customer files, does accurate estimates of time and labor, handles inventory of product and materials, keeps a track of sales and expenses, and even functions as a small POS when I sell at craft markets. All my Filemaker knowledge is self-taught or from lurking in FM forums.

I've had an eye on making the solution available to other craft artists as a runtime solution for a few years--working in spare time to make it functional for craftspeople other than woodworkers. I currently have a couple of other craftspeople functioning as testers and advisors. I've been making runtime solutions for them both in Mac (my platform) and Windows 7, running in emulation through Parallels.

 

I believe the File Not Closed errors may stem from trying to edit the file while in Windows this past weekend, though it may have come earlier. (I wasn't aware that accessing the file through Parallels/Mac file sharing was a no no. I've since turned all file sharing off.)

 

What are my options? Rebuilding the database from the ground up would be a monumental task. The oldest copy I have is from 2010, but I'm presently unable to open it (I strengthened the user password since then and don't remember the old one). How do I guard against future corruption (if that is what it is)? How do other people using the runtime also guard against corruption?

 

I believe the solution has value on the market, but in it's present state it's too unstable to market.

 

Jim Eddy

[Rick Whitelaw]

Do you have backups?

[Kris M]

Google search for Filemaker corruption returned many matches...

http://fmdiff.com/fm/filecorruption.html

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5421/~/what-to-do-when-your-file-is-corrupt

http://fileshoppe.com/recover.htm

http://repair-corrupt-files.blogspot.com/2012/09/ways-to-prevent-corruption-in-filemaker.html

 

Try searching within this forum as well.

 

In a nutshell their are many things you can do to make the file usable again. The decision on how far to go down the road from doing as little as possible to a complete, from scratch, rebuild depends on the state of your backups and how valuable your data is v.s. how much you value your time.

Root cause analysis, risk analysis and risk mitigation are an important part of the corruption recovery process in addition to getting the file(s) into a stable state.

Just because a file is error free does not necessarily mean that corruption will not reoccur.