forum.vdsworld.com

Tommy · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2003 9:28 pm Post subject:

My default.dsc and default.ico files mistereously disappeared, this must be due to
this bug too! I hope this bug will be solved soon as I cannot afford to lose certain files.

Tommy · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2003 9:36 pm Post subject:

Additionally, VDS 5 insists on deleting a <scriptname>.dat file of one of my projects.

jules · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 9:44 am Post subject:

VDS does not delete anything using wildcards, so there is no reason at all why it should delete files with those extensions. It does use the Windows shell delete functions, as does the runtime, so it's possible that a bug in those functions could cause files to be deleted. A similar report to this came up during beta testing, as a result of which some debug logging was added to the IDE recording every file save, rename or delete operation. No problem was ever discovered.

As it happens, on Thursday I was working on a program of mine, updating it to use VDSPOPUP. Because (I presume) of passing some invalid parameters to VDSPOPUP, several times when the menu should pop up the VDS IDE just crashed without trace. Eventually I solved the problem, and after I'd finished for the day and done my backup, I happened to look in the project folder and almost all the files in there had vanished. The .dsc and .dsp were there, presumably because they had been stored in the IDE and re-saved after the directory contents had been deleted.

Fortunately I was using (pause for commercial) Tech-Pro GetBack, which had made copies of all the files in that folder every time I changed them. I was able to recover the latest version of each file using that. If I hadn't been using that, I would have had to go back to the previous day's backup. I would have been very upset if I'd only discovered the problem after all my backup Zip discs had been overwritten, though.

What I'm trying to say is, all the points where the VDS IDE deletes anything are known, have been looked at, and to my knowledge could not be responsible for deleting other, wanted files. The only things the IDE deletes are .~dsc files, and certain other temporary files with extensions starting with a tilde that are created during compilation. Plus I think some file containing syntax highlighting instructions for the editor, when you close a project.

However, it isn't possible to say with certainty that deleted files could not occur due to, say, an invalid path in a script being tested. I'm pretty sure that was the explanation in my case, because I saw that GetBack had saved a bunch of files created by my script that should never have been written there in the first place.

If anyone is still convinced that it is the VDS IDE causing the problem, perhaps they could use a file monitoring tool like Filemon to produce a log proving that it happens.

vdsalchemist · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 3:24 pm Post subject:

Umm,
I too have had files mysteriously disappear while working with VDS 5. It just happened this week-end. Several files went missing from a project directory. Most of the files had nothing to do with the project that was loaded in VDS 5 nor did they have anything to do with VDS at all. Some were 3rd party DLL's.
I had seen this a couple of times before but in the past I just blamed it on my External harddrive which I have "Write behind caching" turned on. Luckily I make backups these days so nothing much was lost just a couple of lines. Just a note I was changing the order of the #includes... Some of the #includes had included files inside of files but the project was a pretty big project too, over 10,000 lines long. Anyway once I restored from back-up I was able to re-arange the #included files with no problems.

EDIT

Ok here is some of the info I forgot to mention.

Windows 2000 Professional SP3 (US English version)
1 1.8Ghz AMD processor
1 External USB HardDrive 80GB with 86% free disk space
1 Internal 40gb harddrive with 85% free disk space
256mb ram total
90mb of ram free at that time I was performance testing my app so I was running taskmanager.

No long file names were used for the path.
Files were saved on the External USB harddrive.
The project was 3 directories deep.
No directory name was over 4 characters in length.
VDS 5 was already running so I opened the file with the File menu's ReOpen option because I was switching between projects.
I made changes in the orginazation of the #include files.
I used the Save All button on the tool bar to save my changes.
I then tried to run the script by clicking the run button.
The compile tab said that it could not read one of the included files.
I checked that the project managers folder tab had the path to the included files which it did. The path at that time for the include files were the same as the main project file's folder.
I then checked if the file was there and found that all the files other than the main script and project file was missing.
The name of the main script file and the project file are the same other than the extension.
The names of the included files are different but they were not *.dsu's they were *.dsc files.

Here is some of the programs I was running at the time.
Popup Stopper 3.X
Trillian 2.0
Nero's CD-Burner systray apps
Sound card's systray app
Mouse's systray app
Editpad.exe (A text editor used to copy and paste code from IE to VDS)
Windows Explorer opened to several directories (I think it was 4 or 5 different directories)
Internet Explorer 6.x opened to several web sites (I think there was 4 or 5)
LccWin32 3.x

I think that accurately depicts what was happening at the time that my files went missing in the project folder.
/Edit

CodeScript · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 6:01 pm Post subject:

I am very much convinced that IDE does delete files that has nothing to do at all with VDS. It is just unmistakable when the files from my root directory of a drive were deleted Miserable

(I had a backup on A CDRW).
And a strong warning is never place a .dsc file in the root directory of a drive and run it.
As for Filemon I wanted to prove it for myself once as this is a rare and random event but VDS IDE kills Filemon Mad

. In the above case I just opened a blank .dsc file and then closed the IDE and nothing else. No other app except virus scanner was running.

jules · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 8:06 am Post subject:

I can only repeat that I already looked at this and I have no idea how this could possibly happen.

Your description of how you produced the problem is not sufficient to reproduce it. What was the name of the DSC file you opened, what was its path, what did it contain, was there a DSP file of the same name as it, what did that contain, was the IDE running before you tried this, how did you open it (from the file menu, or by clicking on an icon in Explorer), what OS were you using.

I have been using the VDS 5 IDE for over a year since it was first written and this has only once happened to me in circumstances when there were errors in the program being tested that could account for it. As I'm sure you understand, it's just about impossible to fix an error that occurs only rarely in circumstances that no-one knows how to reproduce, except by intuition, and intuition is out of ideas at the moment.

CodeScript · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 1:01 pm Post subject:

Tommy · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 3:57 pm Post subject:

I won't be using VDS 5 on my main system until this matter is resolved. It's ridiculous
to believe that Windows XP with all available updates and service packs would be
responsible for loss of files. Happily it didn't make me lose any crucial files yet, but
CodeScript's and other people's details have made me realize that this very well
could have happened. Also it is obvious that this error is not rare, considering
this forum topic.

LiquidCode · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 4:00 pm Post subject:

Yes, it just happened to me again today. Sad

I now make backups all the time. It's a pain. Evil or Very Mad

marty · Professional Member Joined: 10 May 2001 Posts: 789

Woa! Your scaring me guys. I use VDS 5 rarely. Im more on my old VDS 4.5.

But as Tommy said I think I will temporarly stop using VDS 5 until this is resolved. Can't risk losing some files on my system.

Will follow this thread more carefully now.

PGWARE · **Web Host** Joined: 29 Dec 2001 Posts: 1566

I make updates to my alloy.dsc/dsp files with VDS 5 all the time and have never encountered such an deletions or problems yet.

FreezingFire · **Admin Team** Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 3508

Guys, you don't need to stop using VDS 5. Just be careful: don't
run a script on your root drive/path, make backups, etc.

I do a lot of work with VDS 5 and have never encountered such
things ever either.

CodeScript · Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 5:16 am Post subject:

The only thing a little relieving is that till now I think it has never deleted any files outside the directory containing the .dsc file and the VDS program directory (but you never know).
Another helpful information in fixing that is the files deleted have very poor recovery rates by undeletion utilities compared to files of the same age deleted manually/VDS File delete/File deletion with API from VB. So this deletion may not be by shell but binary disk access or something.
I had two instances one of a DSU which got corrupted(contents were truncated when the file was viewed) for no reason.second of that of a include file which is not a dsu "include.fil" the contents of which got truncated for no reason.Also the point at which file deletion occured is closing the IDE in my second case as I could see the files dissapearing before my eyes (as I already said) when I closed the minimized IDE from the taskbar by a right click. I don't know if this is always the case or not.

Also would it not be a good idea to create all these temp files made during compliling/test compiling to be created and deleted from the windows temp directory or an appliation specified temporary directory so that the IDE may have more restricted access to the app directory (it will copy the final exe and dsp to the app directory from temp directory and delete files from the temp directory. Would it not increase the safety?
I understand that this may not be entirely feasible because .dsp file of same names will be a problem. Any such thing needs radical changes to be made to the IDE which may not be practical.

jules · Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 8:34 am Post subject:

Codescript, you need to report this in as much detail as possible to Commercial Research, including what I think is the very significant fact that you witnessed the files being deleted upon closing the IDE.