Gnucash Crash and "No Suitable backend was found"

[David T.]

Riley,

David’s advice is good. 

I’d just add two small points: 
1) the .gcm file IS NOT your data file. It is only the metadata about your file. For some reason, people get it into their heads that the gcm file is their data, when it’s not.
2) GnuCash stores its data in compressed format unless you open the preferences and change them yourself. So, one would expect to not see useful data in a text editor.

David T.

> On Apr 16, 2017, at 5:39 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 13 April 2017 at 15:41, rileyelem <riley.vittitoe at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm running this on Windows 10.
>> 
>> I have been using Gnucash for more than a year. Yesterday I was using it at
>> the same time as a few other things were open. The program crashed and took
>> Windows down with it. The computer restarted itself and I tried to reopen
>> Gnucash but started getting the error message "No Suitable backend was
>> found"
>> 
>> The data file is there where I saved it in the Documents/Accounts/ folder
>> I check for the .gcm file in the User directory and it is there
>> I tried reinstalling gnucash
>> I tried opening data files in Notepad++ but all I see a bunch of NUL
> 
> If you look in the same folder as the accounts file (called something
> like youraccounts.gnucash) you will see the backup files that GC takes
> each time it saves. These will be called
> youraccounts.gnucash.yyyymmddhhmmss.gnucash where the timestamp string
> indicates when the backup was made. If your accounts file is corrupted
> you should be able to go back to the previous backup and open that
> (using File > Open). Once you find a good one don't forget to use File
>> Save As to save it with another name without the timestamp.
> 
> Alternatively you could go back to the latest backup of the file that
> you routinely take in case of major disaster. Don't forget that a PC
> or disc may go up in smoke (literally or metaphorically) at any
> moment, taking all your important data with it, if you do not do
> routine backups.
> 
> Colin
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