[GNC] Help please. Upgraded from 2.3.4 to 4.12. Worked fine. But database does not load. Win 11.

[David Cousens]

As Adrien pointed out anytime you do an upgrade of GNuCash you should ALWAYS
make a backup copy of the data file before starting the upgrade and keep it at
least until everything is working. It is a good practice to regularly make a
backup copy of your data file in any case, preferrably to another computer,
network storage or a cloud (online) storage, usb stick etc. If you have problems
then you can always copy (not move) the file from your backup to your data
directory and start again. Are you using the xml file (a text file)  or an
actual database backend?

The datafile format sometimes has to be changed to accomodate new features and
fix some bugs. If such changes occur it is usually when changing from the last
version of a major series to the first version of the next. Version 4.x will
assume that the file has already been upgraded from version 2 to version 3. Each
new major version of GnuCash includes a procedure for updating the datafile the
first time it is run with a higher version. 

As well as changes in the datafile itself, there are sometimes changes in the
locations where stored reports and user preference data etc are located. These
are usually translated by the installation procedure for the first install of a
higher major version (2->3->4). The locations are also different on different
operating systems.https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations has
details of the locations for various versions on Linux/Windows/Mac. The page can
be hard to read but there are some diagrams accessed form links about halfway
down the page

Not sure how you can recover without a backup of the original file. 

With a 30Mb file it may take some time to convert the datafile  at startup.
GnuCash will be unresponsive while this is taking place so don't assume it has
stopped/crashed - use the task manager
(https://www.howtogeek.com/405806/windows-task-manager-the-complete-guide/) to
check that it is no longer runnning as Adrien suggested and if so let it run to
completion or until it actually crashes. 

If GnuCash is actually crashing, i.e. it stops running completely, then
generating a trace file and stack trace file as described in
 https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Tracefile and posting them here may help in
working out if your file can be fixed and how. 

If you can get your datafile to open, before doing anything else run the
Actions->Check & Repair->All transactions from the menu.

Hope this helps.



On Wed, 2022-10-19 at 23:11 +1100, Rosepetals wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I’m running Windows 11.
> 
> I was running Gnucash 2.3.4 for years and finally decided to upgrade to the
> latest stable release of 4.12 so I can export to a spreadsheet.
> 
> The setup needed to uninstall 2.3.4 which went fine and then 4.12 finished
> installing.
> 
> I opened Gnucash 4.12 and opened my Gnucash database. It notified me I
> needed to upgrade the database to the new version which worked fine and I
> was able to access all my data. I made a few entries and closed Gnucash
> without any issues.
> 
> Later I opened Gnucash again but this time it didn’t auto open the database
> and I'm left with a blank screen. I proceed to locate and open the database
> but after waiting for it to load, nothing appears. I try to load it
> manually in other ways but eventually Gnucash crashes.
> 
> If it helps, the database is 30MB in size.
> 
> Please help. I have 13 years of data here.
> 
> Thanks for looking!
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