Corrupted Portraits Big File

[JoeRudi26]

I was messing around with portraits yesterday, and somehow corrupted my portraits big file (MVP 08).  I was in a rush to get this done before I had to leave to run some errands, and right before I left my computer just hung up/froze.  I didn't think too much of it, I was backing up files, copying and pasting some things, importing portraits, and browsing sites all at one time.  

I had to manully shut off the computer, restart, got it back to desktop and then I left.  

I came back two hours later and jumped back on the computer only to find out things were not right.  My browser was freezing so I actually uninstalled/reinstalled it.  Cleaned the disk (RunCleaner), among a ton of other troubles shooting options, and when I tried to defrag, it was stopping on "portrait.###'.  At this point, it still didn't hit me that this one file could dismantle my whole computer. I tried to copy and paste it to the desktop, and it did the sme thing.  Just froze my whole system.

To make a long story short, I started in safe mode, copied the original portrait big from my game disk, deleted the corrupted portrait file from the game, started  back up in normal mode  and now everything works perfectly.  My question is, has this happened to anyone else?  Be it the portrait file, models big file, etc.?

I had no idea one corrupt file could wreak such havoc.   :huh:

[Maestro23]

I was messing around with portraits yesterday,

See, you shouldn't drink and compute at the same time Jay...

What were you using to edit the portrait.big file?

[JoeRudi26]

See, you shouldn't drink and compute at the same time Jay...

What were you using to edit the portrait.big file?

I was actually installing (with TiT) a couple of Dodger portraits that bob44 uploaded.  I always make a fresh backup of my entire MVP folder when I install anything.  I've been burned too many times before. 

But between deleting the old backup, copying the new one, installing the portraits, browsing sites, and among other things, my computer just couldn't handle it.  I was transferring (in one way or another) about 5 GB at one time, and basically my computer just "stopped" at the point that it had too much.  Like I said, it took me a little while to figure it out, but I had no idea one corrupt file could do all the damage that it did.  Not permanent damage, but I couldn't open anything for more than 3 minutes without it freezing.

Anyway, it was entirely my fault, I guess I've learned a lesson.  Again.   :D

[Maestro23]

I was actually installing (with TiT) a couple of Dodger portraits that bob44 uploaded.  I always make a fresh backup of my entire MVP folder when I install anything.  I've been burned too many times before. 

But between deleting the old backup, copying the new one, installing the portraits, browsing sites, and among other things, my computer just couldn't handle it.  I was transferring (in one way or another) about 5 GB at one time, and basically my computer just "stopped" at the point that it had too much.  Like I said, it took me a little while to figure it out, but I had no idea one corrupt file could do all the damage that it did.  Not permanent damage, but I couldn't open anything for more than 3 minutes without it freezing.

Anyway, it was entirely my fault, I guess I've learned a lesson.  Again.  

Yeah, that's happened to me a few times.

Sounds like you had too much multi-tasking going on, and it sapped all/most of your system resources. Vista or XP said, "I've had enough!"

How much RAM do you have?

[Homer]

if 08 was installed correctly, there should already be a backup of the portraits.big file in the same folder. if you look inside the frontend folder, and find a BAK file for the portraits, you can just copy it, and rename it to portraits.big and you should have your original 08 portraits.

[Maestro23]

if 08 was installed correctly, there should already be a backup of the portraits.big file in the same folder. if you look inside the frontend folder, and find a BAK file for the portraits, you can just copy it, and rename it to portraits.big and you should have your original 08 portraits.

Ah Homer, I forgot TiT did make automatic backups. Thanks for that reminder.

[JoeRudi26]

if 08 was installed correctly, there should already be a backup of the portraits.big file in the same folder. if you look inside the frontend folder, and find a BAK file for the portraits, you can just copy it, and rename it to portraits.big and you should have your original 08 portraits.

lol, I didn't even look.  Like I said, I just copied it back from the disk and started getting the portrait packs back out of the download's section.

Thanks for the tip though, I'll remember that next time.

[JoeRudi26]

Yeah, that's happened to me a few times.

Sounds like you had too much multi-tasking going on, and it sapped all/most of your system resources. Vista or XP said, "I've had enough!"

How much RAM do you have?

6 GB.  And it ate every bit of it.   B)

[bob44]

I was actually installing (with TiT) a couple of Dodger portraits that bob44 uploaded.  I always make a fresh backup of my entire MVP folder when I install anything.  I've been burned too many times before. 

Oh crap, you messed up your game trying to install my portraits Good thing it makes a back-up. Do you think the Belisario portrait looks ok? It was hard to find a good pic and i had to tweek it to make his face straight. I just did it kind of fast so i would have something to start my season with.

[MarkB]

Just as a precaution, you might want to try running a quick hard drive diagnostic. It could be that the freeze when attempting to defrag the drive has been caused by that block or cluster on the drive being corrupted and damaged. I'd be tempted to run a surface scan and a chkdskk /r from the recovery console just to make sure the file system is OK and the block on the drive hasn't been damaged. Better to find out now than wait until any other file that's written to the same block gets damaged as well.

[JoeRudi26]

Oh crap, you messed up your game trying to install my portraits Good thing it makes a back-up. Do you think the Belisario portrait looks ok? It was hard to find a good pic and i had to tweek it to make his face straight. I just did it kind of fast so i would have something to start my season with.

Not your fault at all, bob.  Totally mine.  Trying to do too much at once.  The portrait of Belisario was  'different', but I'm using it nonetheless.  I appreciate your time to upload it.

[JoeRudi26]

Just as a precaution, you might want to try running a quick hard drive diagnostic. It could be that the freeze when attempting to defrag the drive has been caused by that block or cluster on the drive being corrupted and damaged. I'd be tempted to run a surface scan and a chkdskk /r from the recovery console just to make sure the file system is OK and the block on the drive hasn't been damaged. Better to find out now than wait until any other file that's written to the same block gets damaged as well.

Thanks a ton, Mark.  To be honest, it does have me worried a bit, and being barely a novice, this is really the reason I was asking.  It just didn't seem right that one corrupted file could shut down my entire system.

But anyway, thanks again and I'm going to take your advice and run the scans.

[MarkB]

NO problem at all. Yep, that's what stuck out to me. If the file was just corrupted internally, the system should still be able to deal with it, but if the part on the drive is damaged, the system wouldn't know how to deal with it, thus, system crashes.

Let me know if you need any help with it.

[JoeRudi26]

Mark -

I was able to delete the corrupt portrait file when logging into Safe Mode, and that helped tremendously.  However, I've had two minor crashes (1 each day) since.  I ran a chkdsk as you suggested, and it hung up in stage 4 of 5 at 69%.  I then ran a surface scan to see if that would fix the errors, and this is the result:

Immediately after running the scan (still in the command prompt window), I got the message "some errors were not able to be fixed, refer to the SR tags in the CBS log".

When I went through the CBS log, it says "all repairs were successful".  As of now, I guess the only thing I can do is 'wait it out' to see if the system continues to crash.

Again, thanks for the help and the tips, if there's anything else I should try, I appreciate your input.

[MarkB]

How long was it sitting at 69% for? I've seen chkdsk /r run for days, literally, without moving, then finishing normally on one of my old drives that got badly corrupted. Fixed the problem though, and it still works today. If you're running chkdsk /r, I'd definitely do my best to ensure that it's on a system you don't need to use urgently - if you have a spare system, put the suspect drive in that and just leave it running until it finishes. It'll often get to a certain sector and just sit there, but it will still be working in the background.

I've never heard of that error before. What program did you use to run the surface scan?

I'd try a decent benchmarking program to see what sort of speeds you're getting from the drive, slow performance can be an early tell-tale sign of drive failure. It may be worth using a SMART analyser to check the status of your SMART data on the drive, as this can indicate early failures.

Waiting it out is an idea, but I'd still be inclined to let chkdsk /r complete. The more it does, the better it can recover data and attempt recovery of bad blocks.

At the end of the day, if you've done all you can software-wise and you're still getting crashes, slow performance and long read/write operations, a full format and reinstall would be the final option. If you still have issues after that, it's probably safe to say it's beyond repair and either keep using it while being aware that it's not in great shape, or just use it as a backup for unimportant files.

[JoeRudi26]

I finally figured out what it was.  After running the surface scan, I went through the CBS.log and googled this line:  Cannot repair member file [l:24{12}]"settings.ini", as this was showing the error.  

After reading through the solutions, it stated , "You can safely ignore the error messages in the CBS.log file. The SFC.exe command falsely reports the Settings.ini file information in the CBS.log file."

I tracked it down to a couple of Widgets that I had downloaded the other day, or at least that's what This Page is saying. But after deleting the initial corrupt portraits file, my system seems to be ok  with the exception of the chkdsk, which was obviously my fault for shutting it down way before it was finished.

I ran the surface scan by going to the Command Prompt Window and typing in "sfc /scannow", and found out you could merely "verify" errors if you type "sfc /verifyonly".

All in all, it seems to be running ok TODAY, but I appreciate all the help you've given me, and if something falls apart, I may be back to ask for your help again, if that's ok.  

*edit - I'm going to run the chkdsk again when I don't have to be on the computer for awhile, just in case*

[MarkB]

The sfc /scannow function only does a check on the Windows files on your hard disk and makes sure than none of them are corrupted or have been replaced with dummies. It basically validates that the files needed for your Windows install to work correctly are undamaged, but it doesn't do a surface scan on the disk itself. Good to hear everything's working fine now though.

Feel free to let me know if I can help with anything, it's no problem at all. :)

[tebjr]

Feel free to let me know if I can help with anything, it's no problem at all.

JR, what Mark didn't mention is that there are some hidden fees in all of this help he's giving. ;)

[Yankee4Life]

JR, what Mark didn't mention is that there are some hidden fees in all of this help he's giving.

Shhhh

:lol:

[JoeRudi26]

JR, what Mark didn't mention is that there are some hidden fees in all of this help he's giving.

Just by seeing how much he knows, he can probably access my bank account anytime he wanted anyway.  No need to go through me, the middle man.  

...seriously though, wait until i ask him why i can't get this world golf game to work...

Or what's wrong with my BB Code function..

[MarkB]

Just by seeing how much he knows, he can probably access my bank account anytime he wanted anyway.  No need to go through me, the middle man.  

Your thought process is accurate, my friend!

...seriously though, wait until i ask him why i can't get this world golf game to work...

Or what's wrong with my BB Code function..

Is it the World Gold Tour one that Trues posted that isn't working? If so, what browser are you using, and which version of Flash do you have installed?

As for your BB Code - the tags are screwed up. The size number needs to be enclosed in quotation marks.

It should be;

[size="1"]...seriously though, wait until i ask him why i can't get this world golf game to work...[/size]

[JoeRudi26]

Thanks again, Mark.  I updated to the latest version of Flash ( version 10.0.22.87), and for some reason it still wasn't working in either Opera or Google Chrome.  I reinstalled Firefox and everything is working perfectly.

testing, testing, testing

[size="1"]testing, testing, testing[/size]

For some reason, the text size still doesn't work, as you can see in the code.  Not a big deal though.

[MarkB]

Hmm, that's very odd. I'll try to have a play around with that later and see what's wrong.

EDIT - It looks like, for some reason, your quotation marks aren't being saved. I just tried to edit your post and put the quotes before and after the 1, submitted it, and it stayed the same, and they were gone when re-checking the post. I'll let Trues know. Weird that it's only happening on your account, though. :blink:

[JoeRudi26]

Hmm, that's very odd. I'll try to have a play around with that later and see what's wrong.

When typing in the message box, for some reason when entering for a new line, it double spaces.  Seems this happened a while back when the site was upgraded, and the only way I can 'single space' is to hold shift+enter.  Come to think of it, there was also something wrong with my PM message box, and Trues fixed it.  I was missing some options or something, I honestly don't remember.

Like I said, not a big deal, just a little annoying.

*EDIT - BTW, tebjr will be picking up the tab, I'll make sure he throws a little in for True's while he's at it.   :p

[MarkB]

I've had that happen previously, with the double-spacing, but not on this site. I would often get it with things like Hotmail...beginning to think it's something to do with an installed update that affects how pages are displayed or something, but it can be very annoying.