Recently, I spent 2 days rebuilding a database that was destroyed by an automatic update.
It all started so innocently. I right-clicked on a file to open it in said application (which will remain unnamed, except it manages e.V.s and is in German and can be bought at most media stores here in Germany).
Now, one would think this action would be normal on any Windows system. It would have been except that the said software wanted to do an automatic update BEFORE it would open this file.
Doing things in the correct Order
As the software was in a waiting state, I thought, what could go wrong with going ahead with an update. My first mistake. So, I accepted the update.
Meanwhile back on my hard disk, about a dozen files were being corrupted by this update. This included several dlls, files required for the Help system, some license text files, about 12 in total.
Once started, updates cannot be stopped (at least not with this program)
I finished the update and it requested a restart to continue. This was my only option. So, I meekly did as I was told and restarted the application. My second mistake.
When it restarted, it pooped all over my desktop with error message after error message saying this or that file is being “used by another process”. What process? I checked if any other processes were in use, and of course none were.
Backup, backup, and backup
Out of sheer panic, I copied the entire application folder to another drive as a backup.
Well, let’s not drag this story out too long. After one day I managed to clean out my Windows registry, and got the original version running – from the CD without ANY automatic update.
On the second day, I started trying to find out where my data was. One would think the user manual would tell me where the data was stored. But no. It was all hush, hush, very secret. But I found it using notepad and opening several files that appeared to be databases – proprietary databases unfortunately.
So, now I found my data in one of the files. To save this data, I copied the section of this so called database file and have since then being editing it in Word to take out all the proprietary garbage to have a clean list of data.
It still isn’t done yet
The moral of the story? First, do regular backups of data, if that is possible. Second, do not accept automatic updates when you have opened the program any other way except through the Start menu of Windows. Third, make sure the data IS backed up BEFORE doing updates. Fourth, be suspicious of programs that use proprietary databases. Fifth, one gets what one pays for – purchasing a relatively inexpensive program from a small commercial software company associated with a large media conglomerate bought at a media store is asking for trouble.
Get Good Software and Do Regular Backups
And if you are doing work for an important project, get the right tools and do regular backups of your data.
Nuff Said!
