Xar.file recovery

[Ballpoint]

Can someone tell me if I can recover a xar.file I have just lost whilst using xara xtreme ? I was importing a xar.file into a picture I was working on in Xtreme when it crashed and now I can't open the original file I was working on in xtreme. I spent all weeknd on it so I am a bit miffed now . Thanks.

[Daniel]

How big is the file? If it's 0 bytes, it's gone.

Maybe if a Live Effect has gone bad, X¹ will open it OK without the Xtreme "improvements"?

[Ballpoint]

Hey Daniel, it's 61bytes which by my reckoning may as well be 0 . I hadn't used any of the plugins in xtreme it was just a straightforward drawing. I think the xar.file I was importing messed it up but that was only 56kb. The original file wont open in xara x1 either.

[AntonyF]

We have someone at Xara who's very good at saving files, and I'd recommend sending it in normally. But 61 bytes definitely sounds unfixable I'm afraid.

But if you were importing something when it broke, it may be an idea to send it in so we can see if it's got bird flu or whatever.

[GerryI]

Yes, unfortunately, 61 bytes will not contain any useful info from your drawing. There is no way that importing a file from disk into another drawing should corrupt anything on the hard disk. No files are written to during import so something would have to have gone seriously wrong for this to happen.

What is much more likely is that you loaded your drawing, made some edits and re-saved it before importing the other file and your file was corrupted when you re-saved it rather than during the import. Does this sound possible to you? If so, do you have any previous version of your drawing and can you remember what you might have changed before re-saving it?

To avoid this problem you can either use "Save As" to avoid overwriting your previous version or you can enable the creation of a backup file when overwriting by changing the MakeBakFiles registry value in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XaraXtreme\Options \Filters

...to the value 1.

Note: editing the registry can be dangerous so be very careful if you do this.

Gerry Iles

[MerryOtter]

To avoid this problem you can either use "Save As" to avoid overwriting your previous version or you can enable the creation of a backup file when overwriting by changing the MakeBakFiles registry value in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XaraXtreme\Options \Filters

...to the value 1.

This would be an extremely valuable thing to expose in the user interface --

http://wjm.org/linked/autosave-imaginary.jpg

Ok the bottom checkbox is my fantasy option but 7zip is free software!

Incidentally, Microsoft Acrylic has a sweet crash-saver facility. If your system goes kablooey, it will open up all the documents you were working on more or less exactly where you left off.

Merry

[Ballpoint]

Thanks everyone, some great help here . Gerry, I think what I was doing, and I probably shouldn't have, was importing too many files into the original picture. Then, I was editing those files, importing more xar.files and editing those when the programme decided enough was enough and went 'pop' . I should have stopped and saved as you say. Moreover, if I had imported the files as jpegs it would have been simpler too as I had them on my hard drive as jpegs. I will try what you say with the registry and don't worry, I know much to my horror that doing 'things' to the registry can be very dangerous . Only a month ago I chnaged a value in it (trying to rid myself of the dreaded system 32 bug) when I lost the 'desktop'.....I had inadvertantly changed the values in windows explorer ! Luckily, with the help of my cousin, I could get back into the hard drive and remember what I had changed and corrected it . Also, I do have a previous version of my drawing but as a jpeg....so at least I can work with that .

Merry, that sounds a great idea from microsoft .

[Ballpoint]

Well it's happened again only the scenario was exactly how Gerry called it. I changed the registry as I stated beforehand so how do I recover my picture now. I know it's there because in the preview pane I can see it and also it is 249kb in size. I hope you can help as for the first time in ages I had a decent picture .

[Daniel]

I think there should be filename.bak where your filename.xar file was saved. If you just drag the file into a new Xara window then it should open, or your could rename it from .bak to .xar. Perhaps make a copy of the backup first so that you're not working on the original?

[Ballpoint]

I can't seem to find the .bak file....I've done a search but it isn't anywhere. I tried imprting the original file back into xaraxtreme - it opens but then I get the message saying spurious internal error and I have to close it. I know it's there I just can't use it ((((. Hellllppppp.....