Everything's Gone

Submitted by UniMaster on Mon, 05/16/2016 - 21:24
Forums: 
Soulseek General Discussion

After restarting my computer, I just started up Slsk the same way I always do. This time it asked me for my user ID and password. I entered them, went in, and . . . everything's GONE. My user list, user notes, my own user info, my shared files--EVERYTHING. Now I'm going to have to rebuild it all from scratch (and a good bit of it from memory). What the HELL?! Why would it just knock all of my info out like that? Has this happened to anyone else?

Submitted by sammy123 on Tue, 05/17/2016 - 22:30.

Hi
as it seems your config files were not loaded anymore (defect, corruption). Those are called
soulseek-client.dat.lotsofnumbers
They reside in your profile/home directory. such an event happens when SLSKqt was stopped during a file writing operation (BSOD, trap, manual kill). I'd go for a fsck or chkdsk of the underlying filesystem. If that is OK you could try to implant the old files into the new ones by renaming the old ones to the new names.
One reason to backup regularly is such an occasion:
http://www.soulseekqt.net/news/node/2690
Cheers

Submitted by UniMaster on Fri, 05/20/2016 - 10:08.

Since I don't know how to fsck or chkdsk without fkngup everything, I'll just have to rebuild. I assume backing up just involves exporting the client information, right? I'll have to start doing that.

Thanks for the info and advice. Much appreciated.

Submitted by sammy123 on Tue, 05/24/2016 - 00:02.

Hi Unimaster
a chkdsk is in any way more appreciated. At a BSOD or crash of any kind the filesystem might have a lot of things open. It's done quite easy (Windows) with opening a shell with admin privileges (search for cmd.exe then right mouse click and start as admin) and putting in "chkdsk c: /F" and chkdsk d: /F ... if you have more than one volume/drive letter. It will ask you to restart as it couldn't check it while running the OS on it. After two reboots you are ready to test it again.
With a good editor (like notepad++) you could open the old config files and copy the ascii text out of it to save you from writing it all again.
Cheers

Submitted by TJT on Fri, 05/20/2016 - 17:41.

Are you using NS or Qt? If you are using NS and it crashes while the cfg files are saving, you will sometimes lose certain cfg files. I had that happen in the past when the power has been lost suddenly. Unless you have some kind of backup, that data won't be recoverable. That's while it's pretty important to make backup files of the key cfg files such as your userlist.

If you are using Qt, it would be more difficult to lose everything since it saves the last 3 cfg files. Check to see if there's an older non-corrupt cfg file saved.