#Invalid Project File
32 messages in this thread
O.K. guys, I've got a serious problem that has been going on since I first
purchased 3dsr2, almost a year and a half ago. We had some discussion on this
before but the problem really never go solved and I have to resolve this
problem to continue working with 3ds.
The problem is that when I work on a prj. or .3ds save it, wait some time then
come back to open the .prj or .3ds the program gives me "Invalid Project File"
or "invalid 3ds file". I back up the prj or 3ds on several different formats
and all the formats give the same "invalid" message when I try to load. Now
this is some 3ds problem because all the files were saved and worked on before,
say 6 months ago, then when I reopen them, work on them and save them, the next
time I go to open the files that is when I find all updates have been
corrupted. I have some prj. that have thousands of dollars invested in them and
I "Have" to retrieve
them. Maybe I can upload one of the files and some one can try them on their
3ds machines. Also could some other program I work on, with my computer, be
corrupting 3ds? Help, give me some ideas. Also I remember at one time Greg
made a comment about "Invalid 3ds File" really meant something else the program
was asking for. Does that ring a bell Greg?
Any help would "really" be apprieciated.
Carl.
Carl,
<< r2 and invalid project file…>>
This was a bug in R2 that the Yost group has squashed
in R3. Upgrading to R3 will solve it as well as give you
over 200 new features, network rendering and a more
robust materials editor.
jonas[adesk]
Jonas,
Thats fine and dandy for R3, but what am I to do with all the damaged files I
have know?
carl
Carl:
>> Does that ring a bell Greg?
Sorry, nope! Do you have 3DS3 or 3DS2?
Maybe a program could be written to open the invalid file in DOS and save out
all the valid information. At least you'd have most of it!
Greg Pyros
Greg-
I have R2. I'll have to look through my old messages and see if I can find the
the tread you were talking about.
Carl
Carl:
The first thing to do is to get R3! It's been out for 6 months now, I don't
remember R2 well enough to help out on anymore! <g>
Greg Pyros
I had that happen on two .prj files in R2. I had no such problems with .3ds
files, so I always saved both. Perhaps that will help. Also, this problem has
disappeard with R3. R3 is so much better than R2 that I can not EVEN begin to
describe it without going on another "R2-is-obsolete" rant <g>. Suffice it to
say that R2's renderer is noticeably inferior in every way, and that's just a
start.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Yes, Yes, Yes, I know how wonderful R3, but that will not solve my imediate
problem. Did you fix the prj. files? And yes I saved the project both ways, As
a .3ds file and as a .prj file and when I went to load them up they were both
corrupted, it seems to be that the saving technique thru 3ds had something to
do with the corruptions. Because only the files worked on at that perticular
time were corrupted by loading then re-saving them thru 3ds.
Car
It never happened to me extensively enough (total of 3 times over a year) to
cause real problems. Since I made frequent saves, I was always able to recover
lost stuff (due to other problems like hd crashes, cross-linked files, etc…).
I am a firm believer in not trusting PC's, or computers in general, to do
anything right. These damned mojo boxes do what they want, and when they work
right I consider it a gift from heavan. I'm about ready to throw out my Norton
Utilities, screw driver and soldering gun, and buy some magic dust, mojo bones,
dice, crow's feet, etc… <g>.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Sometime I feel like throwing a live sacrificial chicken and a few
incantations into that stew as well (g) 🙂
>>Sacrificial chicken<<
I only do that when I've got the flu, and I usually look for a Jewish mother to
perform the ritual <g>.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
I've had the same problem a few times — The only thing that worked was to
start with a clean .prj, and merge the mesh/light/camera info into it. I
should also mention that this didn't always work. Maybe you could talk Gary or
Gus G into writing a .3DS/.PRJ rebuilding utility. Whaddaya think guys? <g>–
–John
Joseph-
Thanks for the reply and the suggestion about the merge. But like I said in the
original message even the .3ds file that was saved got corrupted.
I just wish some bug like this would have been pointed out before I laid out
$3000.00 plus. Something like "Warning, after spending hundreds of hours and
thousand of dollars on a project it might just self destruct on its own,
because of a flaw in the program, your own your own dude."
If possible, can you send me one of these corrupted files? I'd like it for my
"strange file collection." Having a specimen of these strange files is very
important for file translators like me!
No problem John. I'll load up one of the smaller files. All the bytes are
there, it just comes up at "invalid Project File" under 3ds. Maybe you can try
loading it up under 3dsr3 and see if that works.
Thanks
Carl
Carl,
<< invalid projects. >>
I'm sorry that your project is invalid. For R2 users out there,
this does not happen often and the recommended work around
is to make periodic backups of your files. If one was to become
invalid, you can recover from a previous version.
jonas[adesk]
Jonas-
Maybe you didn't read my message carefully or I did not make myself clear. But
I backed up the projects and files on two different medias. And all were
corrupted. One on another hard drive, and another on a floppy stored seperated.
Making a total of 3 copies of the files (1 original and two backups, 1+2=3)
The saving or loading precedure of 3ds is what corrupted the files. Not just
one isolated .prj or .3ds file.
Carl,
<< Making a total of 3 copies of the files (1 original and two backups, 1+2=3)
>>
Once a .3ds or a .prj file gets corrupted in R2, there isn't anything to do
except go back to a *previous* saved version of the .3ds/.prj file.
If it's an important project it not uncommon to have a 7 day cycling
rotation of files representing the state of the project over the last 7
days. Also, it's important to occasionally load the cycling-archive
.3ds/.prj file to test the saved file/(backup medium's) integrity.
With tape drives at an affordable price, investing in a drive and
implementing a daily tape backup strategy would help you in dealing
with data loss frustrations and recovery.
jonas[adesk]
It sounds like you may have a problem with your HD controller, Carl.
– G
You know this keeps seeming to pop up as the one linkable suspect to
my problems. Does anyone out there have a suggest for a good and fast
SCSI ESAI driver?
I'm sure one of the hardware jocks on the forum would be able to suggest one,
Carl.
– G
So are you saying that you tried merging from the "corrupted" file, and that
that failed too?
<Jonas — if you're listening, how about adding to the wishlist a "recover"
command for .3DS and .PRJ files like AutoCAD has for damaged DWG files?>
Dave
David,
<< wish for recovering bad files… >>
well…. there haven't been any bad prj's or 3ds' reported
in R3 so……
jonas[adesk]
Jonas-
Are you suggesting that everone has to update to r3. Hey, I paid $3000.00 for a
program that I expect to work, manditory updating was not part of any buying
agreement.
Carl
R2 loaded and saved .prj and .3ds files with no problem. Are you under the
impression that this was caused by something that 3DS did?
Well it only seemed to happen in the 3ds enviroment. Anything else I
worked on that day seemed to be alright.
If you were swapping, no other application that you use thrashes the hard disk
as much. Phar Lap is brutal.
– G
Just a short sanity check – I've loaded and saved THOUSANDS of files
with 3DS r2 and have never seen a corrupted file. I used an EISA
Adaptec SCSI controller and two different HDs. It seems from my
experience (and many others') that 3DS _does_ work and something else
may be wrong with your system. If you can't find it and fix it,
upgrading to R3 may not even help, then you'll really be mad. <g>
Maybe you could describe your system and some of the wizards here
(leaves me out) might spot something.
Are you using an IDE drive? There was a lot of talk last winter (or
spring) about people having problems with 3DS that were traced to an
IDE controller. When the controller was replaced, the problems went
away. These things are so cheap, it might be worth it to get a
replacement just to try.
Another thing, (I forgot the beginning of your thread, so you may have
already mentioned it), how much memory do you have? If you memory is
limited requiring swapping to disk, things can get unstable if the
memory management is not perfect. When I had only 16 megs, my 3DS r2
would crash everytime it tried to swap. Something wierd was going on:
when I put in 40 megs this problem went away – no more crashes, even
when swapping.
I hope you can find the problem and fix it. BTW, 3DS r3 is so much
an improvement that I would hate to do without it.
Yea, maybe I'm jumping the gun blaming 3ds, but the corrupted files
were only 3ds files and other programs, like Lotus and some database
programs I have on my machine all worked o.k. on the same day.
Any way Gary made a point about it may be the the H.D. controller and
I think I have had those magical mysteries problems with 3ds and my
SCSI EISA AMI controller. Any suggestions on a good fast SCSI EISA
controller? Oh yea I should say, dependable.
I'm using an Adaptec 2742T, which is a risc co-processed, twin
channel fast SCSI II controller. It is the replacement for the
venerable 1742. The new 2742W is out, it's fast wide SCSI III, but
also has SCSI II ports on it. I think that would be the way to go,
because the new fast wide SCSI III hd's are coming out, and should be
the fastest thing around.
John,
WOW SCSI III, I quess I haven't been keeping up on my reading lately. Do you
have any info on the SCSI III format and it's specs? How about the those new
SCSI III drives, what kind of times and information passing are we talking
about?
Thanks
Carl.
I don't really know much about SCSI III, and there are only a couple of HD's
out there now on the spec. I guess giving Adaptec a call would be your best
bet about finding info on the format.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)