Out of Memory Error

[Lemaireus]

I'm not sure it's a bug, but it is a problem that has suddenly developed with my catalog (v 4.2.0.2) that now stores 3800 titles: each time I try to open the catalog, the process slows down to a crawl at 70% stage. Then it continues to load in one percentage point increments till it gets to 100%, and then it gives me an "Out of memory" message.

This is certainly not a hardware issue (see system specifications below): I get the same error on my second machine, at exactly the same stages. So basically I cannot open my main movie catalog and I'm lost without it!

I've three catalogs: the main one with 3800 titles, and two secondary ones with 400 and 150 odd titles. The problem affects only the 3800 title catalog; the other two open perfectly fine.

System specifications:
1. Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
2. AMD Phenom IIx4 965 3.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Windows & Ultimate 64 bit

I would appreciate any help or suggestions on this: it's simply not possible to manage a 3800 title collection without the catalog. Could touching 3800 titles have triggered the issue? If yes, is there a solution or a workaround? Are there others who are working with similarly large AMC files? My catalog file size is 330 MBs.

In order to do anything with the catalog I first need to open the file and I cannot find any way to do that at the moment

[antp]

That's a rather big catalog (using external pictures help in such case), but it shouldn't fail with such error.
It is possible that the file became corrupted.
Check if you have a .bak file located in the same folder as the .amc file : rename that file to another name with a .amc extension and open it, you should find your catalog from before the last time you modified it.

[Lemaireus]

Thanks, Antoine, that helped me recover the file, and the recovered file is working perfectly fine so all is well (and keeping my fingers crossed that I don't run into something similar anytime soon!).

[antp]

It is a sign that it is wise to make backups from time to time, in case next time you can't recover using that file
(not only due to a software bug, but a disk crash or computer crash is possible too...)

[Lemaireus]

Will do a weekly backup after this episode: those hours without catalog access nearly had me tearing my hair out!