| Newsgroups |
gmane.comp.windows.eccopro |
| Message-ID |
<[email protected]> |
Last Saturday I encountered an ECCO issue I never wanted to see - I couldn't open my ECCO file and was a getting this error message, "The master data file has been restored from a backup and is incompatible with this file". Since November of last year I had been using ECCO Pro 4.6.7.7. I obtained it from the Creative services developer, Friedhelm Dohmann, under annual $20 subscription. As many of you know, Mr. Dohmann passed away in early 2017. 4.6.7.7 was designed to be installed and operate within the Windows 10 64 bit environment. For me it worked well... until last Saturday. Use ECCO just about every day and the have since its purchase in 1993. Needless to say, the contents would be impossible to restore. While much of this was just historical stuff, much of it too was still relevant and invaluable.
With assistance from a number of mentors from this forum (principally Pastor Don, Kerry Zimmerman, Mark Heleniak), I recovered from my panic mode, and after several false starts (including even trying to modify ECCO in the Windows Registry), we got her done.
For those that may encounter a similar issue, here some possibly helpful notes:
* Root cause not clear, here are the symptoms before the crash. The error message cited above had been showing up each I opened ECCO in my desktop PC. It' was 'greek' to me and I paid no attention to it because ECCO continued to work ... until last Saturday.
* In troubleshooting to isolate the cause I tried installing 4.6.6.7 on my wife's laptop. Even though I had the original install files and the Creative Services license key, no cigar. I then try to install 4.01 on the laptop, knowing full well that this was advertised at as the 32 bit WIN 10 version, and I had the paid for license key for it too. That didn't work either, this time because WIN 10 told me 4.01 was incompatible with my version of Windows. This little exercise suggested the license key for 4.6.7.7 had expired because I was unable to renew my annual subscription due to Mr. Dohmann's passing.
* I also tried from my desktop to open backups of the current ECCO file as well as older versions of this file. That didn't work either. These 2 tests suggested my license key for 4.6.7.7 had expired, and the issue wasn't with file's database.
* Kerry told me had installed the free version of ECCO 4.01 on his WIN 10 64-bit box and it was working well. I was struggling to comprehend this, because Mr. Dohmann's literature said 4.01 was only for 32-bit boxes and my attempt to install 4.01 had failed. Nevertheless I decided to give it a try.
* Kerry passed me his version of 4.01, which proved to be interesting exercise itself. On Wednesday I installed that version on my wife's laptop, added to a self-created 'ECCO' off of the C drive, double clicked on the RegNetManage.reg file, and low and behold ECCO opened licitly split. Next I closed ECCO, then clicked on a duplicate copy of my current ECCO file, and wonder of wonders, it opened too. Life was looking good ... but I was still seeing the error message, "The master data file has been restored from a backup and is incompatible with this file". Darn!
* To try to fix this, it occurred to me that ECCO had a database fix function. Off the File menu, the path is Database, Recover. I ran that little utility, it asked to save the file with a different name, and ECCO told me the new file had been recovered. Low and behold, when I clicked on it, it opened up and milliseconds, and without error message anymore. My prayers had been answered! Well, not quite.
* When I tried the exact same approach on my desktop, ECCO didn't work and ECCO recovered file didn't work. One last step was needed to achieve success. Using the Windows Add and Remove Programs feature, I removed 4.6.7.7. Up until this point, I had been reluctant to do that, because even though it didn't work, I was concerned that if I removed it, I would never be able to recover because it was the only version I had that was supported with a license key (even though the key didn't work on my wife's laptop). Of course as soon as I removed 4.6.7.7, yes, I was home free.
Everything is working perfect now, thanks to the free version of 4.01, some encouragement from others, and a lot of patience. Big thanks to Pastor Don, Kerry, and Mark!
Peter Shearston
P.S. ECCO 4.01 does not install as standard application. Essentially the install program is the RegNetManage.reg file. As a result, you are not going to find ECCO listed in Windows Programs. The solution of course is to simply create a shortcut on your desktop.