Crashed Header in Database?

[lbesing]

I've been using this program for a while now, error free, but now my database with 550+ entries has crashed unexpectedly. Worked fine day before, and next day it crashed with error "cannot identify file type from header". I also tried to open the backup copy and it didn't work either, same error message. Sample.amc file opens fine, just not the custom one. File is about 6.8mb in size.

Any suggestions on how to fix this? Is there a way to rebuild some index?

Thanks in advance! - Lee in San Antonio, TX

[antp]

Unfortunately I do not know why that happens Some people had that.
What was your file size before? If it had nearly the same size, maybe I could recover it.

[lbesing]

Current AMC file was 6927kb, BAK file was 6835kb size. I've got broadband connection and unlimited mail folder / message size on my account if that helps, or I can post it to my web site with link to download via http, etc.

[antp]

As you prefer.
HTTP is maybe better for that, 2x6.8 MB becomes a little big for e-mail.

[antp]

Just to be sure (as it already happened), you open the file with the same (or newer) version than the one that created it? Because if you try to open with AMC 3.4.x a file made by AMC 3.5, it refuses it.

[lbesing]

I was using version 3.5.0 all along, upgraded when 3.5.0.2 came along. Tried reinstalling older version in new directory, no change in behavior. I didn't make any changes between the time it was working fine and not working.

I've zipped both the AMC and the BAK file (labeled accordingly) into a single ZIP file (9mb) which you can access at http://www.besing.com/Catalogs.zip

There is nothing in this catalog that I would be worried about anyone else viewing. Let me know when you get it, however, and I'll remove it from the site to save space on the server.

[antp]

When I watch the contents of these files, there is nothing related to a valid catalog.
Usually when catalog get corrupted it is one of these cases:
- beginning of the file that is cut or overwritten
- a corrupted picture that is smaller than the expected size
- end that is missing
But here the 6 MB are full of random contents It looks like a hardware failure, or a software error (problem in the FAT/NTFS filesystem, or another program that damaged the file). But I wonder how it could have been done by AMC itself
Unfortunately nothing can be used in these files

[lbesing]

I had a system crash between the time it was okay, and the time it wasn't okay. I might have even had the AMC program open when it crashed. System did scan and recover errors on that drive when it rebooted. Bet that is when it happened. That will teach me to make extra backups on another hard drive in the future.

Thanks for all your efforts!