Frequent Crash and inability to restart

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Mon, 16 May 2011 14:19:39 -0700
Joseph Smith <jsmithlivermore at pacbell.net> wrote:

> I've transferred my personal finance data set to GnuCash and am
> tweaking to get to a valid state.
> 
> I have had a few crashes and get the following message on restart: 
> "GnuCash could not obtain the lock for file:///Users/etc." (etc.
> being the remainder of the chain name on my computer.)
> 
> I have previously fixed the problem by creating a new file.  This 
> entails abandoning the work since the last build.
> 
> So,
> 
>    1. How does one restore from the most recent save (autosave every 2
>       minutes)?
>    2. How do I get to the help function without starting the creation
> of a new file?
> 
> "How does one avoid the crash?" is not as big an issue as is
> gracefully recovering - creating the file from scratch is not
> graceful.
> 
> On the surface, this appears to be a problem that is likely common 
> enough that it should have been fixed already.
> 
> I clicked on the button |<gnucash-user at gnucash.org 
> <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>> expecting to get to a discussion 
> group, but got this email page.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Joseph A. Smith
> |

The first answer was actually simple, and probably in the FAQs page.
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ
If you have crashed out of the program you have left the lock file in
place. You can either delete this lock file if you are not using the
program OR just telling Gnucash to "open anyway".
Your data is not gone, just exists a few times.

So welcome aboard, and can you give us details about how you have
managed to achieve the crash? 
Operating system?
Version of Gnucash?
What you have done which precipitates the crash?

and feel free to join the email list 
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
so you are not waiting for your mail to pass the moderator.