Win OS reinstall looses Program files including logs - GCM file found
Mary Ann Wallace
wallace at naples.net
Thu Feb 5 00:04:30 EST 2015
My thanks and appreciation to John and David for their comments and
advice. Small progress has been made, but I ran into a problem that I
hope can be solved.
A brief summary for those new to this post: My Win7 Pro 32-bit hard
drive failed 6 months ago. An Acronis image had been created, a new
drive subsequently installed and Gnucash is there but only with 6 months
of data. In the meantime, I had copied the Program Files from the Win7
to an external drive. I was using that with a WinXP netbook temporarily
until I could get the Win7 fixed and thought the XP was accessing the
external drive as I entered data to finish out 2014. I discovered in
January that the data was being saved to the XP C:/Program Files folder
taking a screen shot and making a notation, but the XP itself failed
without my backing up those files. The only ones found were GCM files
in My Documents and as I learned here, worthless in recovery. The
technician restored the XP OS the same time he put a new hard drive on
the Win7. It wasn't until I got both of them back that I realized my
Program Files were gone on the XP. I was resigned to recreating the
data when David suggested I take a look at TestDisk.
Re: David's suggestion of TestDisk - I was told by the technician:
> doubt anything is recoverable, even on a sector by sector analysis.
> The process used was the Acer WinXP recovery procedure with the option
> to not format the drive and to backup user data into a "Backup"
> directory. Program Files is not in the user data area.
However, this nagged at me and especially after looking at the website
David recommended, I decided to try TestDisk myself and see if it was
basic enough for me to follow. The site had excellent screen shots
showing what to do and a forum that I went to looking to see if someone
had similar questions in using TestDisk that might have been answered.
When I ran testDisk, it showed thousands of deleted files because I
forgot to specify a filter, but I was able to find:
gnuxmlaccounts.gnucash.20140917001406.gnucash.20141227191309.gnucash
(76kb GNUCASH File 12/27/2014 7:13 PM) and a subsequent log file (1KB)
with a 7:17 PM time stamp as well as all the
gnuxmlaccounts.gnucash......preceding those that had been saved on the
temporary WinXP I was using. I copied them to a directory in My
Documents and then copied them over to an external drive.
Re: John's instructions below to move files to My Documents.
I went on my main computer Win7 Pro 32-bit, and made an Accounts folder
in Documents and moved the old gnuxmlaccounts.gnucash... files to
Accounts per John's advice. I dismissed the error message John said
would come up and it opened as of the old date in June. I closed the
program.
I copied the newly undeleted gnucash data files from my external drive
to the Accounts folder, thinking this should work if I do the right
steps. I don't think I did. I tried just clicking on the 12/27/14 7:13
PM file and the Gnucash program tried to open but had the following message:
I closed the program, reopened it trying to use the File Open and point
to another of the gnucash files and got the following error message:
The Program doesn't show you where it's going when it opens up. The
only way I found out was on a hunch when I detached my external drive.
If I open Gnucash in Win7 with my external drive attached, it opens up
an old file on that drive that I had used on the Acer XP files dated
11/03/14 which has little new data from June since I only started
getting caught up in November. Very strange that the Win7 will look for
the external drive when I've now put files in Accounts and even copied
them back in Program Files. If I remove the external drive, the message
John points out comes up so I use File Open to point it at the 12/27/14
files but get the "No suitable backend found." When I do a "File Open",
the box looks like Word or Excel in that it lists 3 files. the first
and last are short gnucash files but the middle one is the 11/03 file
that is not useful and that resides on the external drive.
Importing seems to be only for "log" files, which don't contain all the
data that the regular ones do with warnings about importing the wrong
log file. It seems I have the later files and ought to be able to start
up the program with them, but I just don't know how.
I copied for the time being all the data files that I had now placed in
the Accounts data folder to the original location in Program Files to
see if just working from the C:/Program Files would work like it did
before. But it still brings up old files and not the new ones. So I've
deleted them since they were copies of the ones I had moved to
Accounts. My current structure is external drive NOT attached, no data
files in Program Files, data files in Accounts.
Is there an explanation of what I should do to be able to open the
12/27/14 files? I feel I'm so close but just don't understand why it's
not working.
Thanks for your help.
Mary Ann
Here is a snipit of late files:
On 2/3/2015 3:42 AM, David Beattie wrote:
> Mary,
>
> As far as I know....
>
> It's not actually normal (in the Microsoft sense of the world) to end
> up with a Windows XP re-install that preserved your data while erasing
> your Program Files directory. I wasn't sure about this, since things
> have changed so much in Vista, 7, and 8, but I looked it up:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978307
> In addition to the 5 ways Microsoft lists, there's a 6th way, called a
> "Repair Install"... and none of these methods erase "Program Files"
> unless they also erase your whole hard drive and leave you with no
> data at all.
>
> So I am concluding that your "restore" of Windows was probably a
> "recovery" operation from the computer manufacturer, rather than a
> pure Windows XP install. I've seen this sort of thing on HP computers
> a lot, although I'm sure other brands (Toshiba, etc.) have recovery
> options that try to preserve data too. There are also plenty of
> system recovery options out there that erase all data! so consider
> yourself lucky.
>
> All the more recent versions of Windows (Vista, 7, 8), when they
> install overtop of an old operating system move the Program Files,
> Windows folders, etc. into a subfolder called "Windows.old"... just in
> case you need to get files out of there which were stored in Program
> Files when they shouldn't have been, or in case you need to extract
> license keys, etc. Makes me wonder if your system restore did
> anything similar?
>
> If not, if the Program Files folder really was deleted and not simply
> moved to some hidden/out-of-the-way location... then perhaps you can
> try some data recovery software to try to get the data files back
> which were deleted. The software I use (R-Studio) is not free, but I
> saw a program called "TestDisk" mentioned on a forum which is free,
> and sounds like it works similarly to the better varieties of
> commercial software. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> David Beattie
> On Monday, February 2, 2015 11:48 AM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us>
> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 2, 2015, at 10:42 AM, Mary Ann Wallace <wallace at naples.net
> <mailto:wallace at naples.net>> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you for changing the target save folder.
> >
> > Is this "fix" available only in a beta or online version? I'm
> assuming those of us using v.2.6.3 won't have this available to us. I
> am running Gnucash v.2.6.3 originally installed on Win 7 Pro 32-bit
> (X84) laptop and after the data I lost that was in C:\Program Files,
> I've been debating downloading a new version and starting my 2015 year
> with that while I run v.2.6.3 on another computer to update it with
> the 6 months of data lost. I have hard copies of data, so I don't
> need consecutive years on the same program. I can just start with a
> new balance sheet as of Jan 1 and zero income. But having data files
> automatically saved to Documents would be a huge relief and make
> backing up easier.
>
> Since I just pushed the change, it isn’t even in today’s nightly
> build. It will be in 2.6.6.
>
> However, it’s just the default on a brand-new installation. When
> GnuCash opens a file it sets the default to where that file is, and
> File>Save As… will change the location of where your file is saved.
> Even if you upgrade without relocating your file GnuCash will remember
> where the file is. So do the following *right now*:
>
> Quit GnuCash if it’s running.
>
> Open Windows Explorer, go to your user documents directory
> (C:\Users\mary\Documents if your userid is mary) and create a new
> folder named Accounts.
>
> Navigate to C:\Program Files (X86)\gnucash\bin, and highlight
> everything that begins with your filename — that will include the file
> itself, foo.gnucash, the backup files
> foo.gnucash.2015013015153327.gnucash, and the log files
> foo.gnucash.2015013015153327.gnucash.log (the numbers are timestamps;
> I made that one up as an example) and drag the lot of them to that new
> Accounts folder.
>
> Start GnuCash. It will complain that it can’t find your file. Dismiss
> the message box and select File>Open. On the left side of the dialog
> box there’s a speedbar with a button with your name on it. Click it.
> That will switch you to your home directory, from which you can
> navigate to Documents\Accounts and find your account file. Select it
> and click OK.
>
> From now on GnuCash will open with the last file opened and any new
> files will default to being saved in the new Accounts folder. That
> will persist even after you upgrade to a new version of GnuCash.
>
> Then, if you haven’t already done so, get yourself an external disk
> and some automatic backup software and start using it!
>
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
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