XXHighEnd

Yesterday evening when I was booting the OS into RAM the boot sequence stopped and asked for the password (XX) which has never happened before. Rather than inputting the password I pressed the reset button, thinking that it wasn't normal to have to input the password. The system rebooted fine and booted properly into the audio PC's desktop. However, when I went to select tracks from a saved playlist I got an error message saying that the playlist was empty. The message appeared with every playlist I selected. I then checked the XXDATA file on the "C" drive  and all of my playlists appeared to be in tact with all tracks present; they were not in fact empty. Then I made an error: after copy/pasting the XXDATA file on the C drive to a backup external drive I then reset the location of the DATA file in XXHighend settings to the C drive.  Afterward I  had a vague feeling that one should not do this....and this did not fix the problem. As before, all of my playlists, when selected, get the error message that they are empty, but they appear to be fine with all tracks there when I open the file on the C drive in explorer. Do I now need to reinstall my 5086 backup and start over or is there an easier solution?

Thinking ...

Brian,

First off, I would set back the original XXData folder (if still possible).
Next, to me it merely looks like your network drive not being available anymore. And this can have happened because the password question you rejected is (can be) related to the access to the other PC (??) where the music files are stored. So if you look in the .PLXX files you see a full path to the files. Can you actually (from the Audio PC) access the drive of those paths via Explorer ?

Peter

Thanks Peter, at this point not sure how to reset the DATA folder to where in XX settings it just says DATA (normal) without a drive letter. Using the folder on from either drive C or D doesnt work: XX sees them as empty. Need to go out for an hour. Otherwise, I am able to access the library and play files. Playlists are the only issue.

In XXHighEnd it should read :
\XXData\
unless you changed that yourself earlier on.

If you load a Playlist, do the tracks show up including the normal playing times ? Maybe not at all because :


... which is a but ambiguous for me.
a. can you show a screenshot from a Playlist which is in the Playlist Area ?
b. can you tell me the exact message and after which exact activity from you this message appears ?

Thanks,
Peter

Because I tried to reset my DATA folder, as described in first post, my DATA folder in XX now looks like this \C:DATA\.

Though all of my playlist names (not tracks) appear when I select the Playlist Names dialogue box, lower right in below screen shot,  when I select, for example, "Favorites" no tracks load. All I get is this error message:

I am sorry but I don't even know what "reset" means in this context.
And I understand about the \C:\DATA" (first \ surely looks wrong), so why not just change that (to begin with).

:sorry:

How?

Brian, something must be really strange or needs way more information from your part of the world.

How ? type it in the field for it.
See, this is too simple to be real. So what's up ?

Typing it gives the exact same result. Didn't know you could type it. Before the RAM OS, I set the location of the DATA folder with the browser button just to the right of it. Otherwise, things in this part of the world are fine. Any other ideas?

Teamviewer ...
You'd have to connect to the internet for that, temporarily.

Anyway, I am curious what this is about.

Okay. I have teamviewer installed on my music server pc. Can you use that pc to look at the audio pc through rdc connection, or do you need a direct connection to the audio pc, which means I'd have to install teamviewer on the audio pc? Am leaving the house now and won't be back for several hours. Thanks

Can only be on the Audio PC. Sorry !

Oh boy ...

Brian, I hope I did not waste half of your Saturday, but of course it IS sufficient to have the Teamviewer connection to the Music Server PC. As long as you use that yourself for control of the Audio PC.
I don't know what I was thinking yesterday ...
Apologies.

Peter

Well that's good news! Recently became a grandpa and got distracted yesterday with family stuff. I already have teamviewer on the music server laptop so I could be ready to do this anytime; right now I'm home but am leaving for Philly in an hour to finish up some work stuff.  So if not now, maybe one morning this week? Say 8:30 a.m. my time? I believe it's a six hour time difference.

Hey hey hey ! Congratulations !

Just announce yourself and I will probably be there instantly.
Good that you did not do anything without reason.

Regards,
Peter

Thanks and very much appreciate the help! Had no idea how wonderful it is to hold in your arms the baby of your "baby"!

Please check email, am standing by now. All is set to go.

I just did and ... too late. Of course I only now realize that you wanted to do this prior to your daily work.
I'll have a better focus tomorrow. :)

Peter

OK Brian, I could look into it via Teamviewer after all.
Ehhh

This could be the weirdest thing I ever encountered in my IT life. All what's in all those files in that folder, turned into spaces. So I think you said they were not empty - and I don't know how you observed that, but for size you are correct. For contents - spaces in everything.
Now if you know that a space as such is nothing special in computerland (it is just an ascii value of 032 IIRC), then it looks like something deliberately blanked it. But it is ONLY about files with text in them. So FYI not only your PLXX files but also the LBRY files (and IIRC another file type). But e.g. not .XXSS because there's not huban readable text in there. Eh ... "because" ??? Well, yes, that is what it looks like.

The source is already on the native drive (D: when you booted into one of the BASE OSes, like at this moment in 10586.0). On a side note if helpful at all - I checked all OSes and only 14393.0 contains a few playlists, but maybe better a few (it's a dozen or so) than losing them all. Because I think that will be the case : you lost all those files.

What I would do and which could very far away help :
Boot into the TRIAL OS (set date to Sept. 2 2015 first) and when in there go to a Command Prompt (cmd) and type :
chkdsk c:/f:
It will ask you to reboot and before the boot completes the c: drive will be checked agains errors. When this finishes (may take a while like 30 minutes) you can boot into 10586.0 again and see whethere the files now contain data. Just rightclick-open or edit from Explorer to see it. Data is there again ? then you're good. Not ? then it is lost unless you made a backup somehow. And, a backup of the .vhd file would do it. So if you meant in the earlier post to restore such a backup (file), then yes. If you meant to restore from the original copy I provided, then it won't help (that wil lnot contain any of your data).

Let me know whether the chkdsk helped.

Lastly, I left the system with 14393.0 attached and you will see on-screen the XXData contents in an OK fashion for all there is. You may copy that XXData folder as a whole to a USB stick, and restore it later after the intended trials and if they don't help.
If you want to leave this screen (or reboot) click e.g. the c: drive first, so this (x:) will close.

Peter

After getting the OS log-in password screen, as described in my first post, and hitting the reset button, the pc booted normally. I then started XX,selected a playlist and received the message that the playlist was empty. Tried others with same result. Opened explorer, clicked on C drive and then opened the DATA folder. In the data folder I clicked on the playlist I tried to play, it opened in notepad as usual, AND THE TRACKS WERE THERE! I then went to the library, selected an album and all played fine. I rebooted the pc, got the same result and I then made the first post in this thread.


WTF! How could this be that it may have been deliberately blanked? That computer has never been connected to the internet. Most of the time when it boots the Server pc is not on, so the audio pc is not even connected to the network until I establish the RDC connection. Do I need to check for a virus on my audio pc?


Will do but probably won't get to it untill the weekend.


Thank you, thank you, thank you. Such a bummer though, to lose that many playlists.....

Brian

To add to the mystery I remembered the following on my commute this morning:

As soon as I opened the DATA folder on the C Drive of the audio pc, clicked on the playlist and determined that the tracks were in fact still "there," I immediately copied/pasted it to the Desktop of the music server pc. I believe I said this in my first post here. HOWEVER, when I checked yesterday all track data was gone from both the DATA folder on the C drive of the audio PC, as you found yesterday, AND from the DATA folder I put on the desktop of the music server pc. How could this not be some kind of virus?

Brian,

The phenomenon "virus" slipped through my mind several times, as nobody is really going to blank the contents of such files. But viruses also noy really, I'd say. Anyway when I mentioned "deliberately blanked" I referred to no normal computer process would do such a thing at any time - and then referring to the "blank" nog being a computer thing at all. So maybe nulls or any other random character (like _ or whatever) but a space is too coincidental.
The strange thing is too that all the file types involved are uncommon file type (I made them all up myself). So why exactly these ?? It is also not that the files of concern are subject to some regular XXHighEnd process. They are just never touched unless you (as the user) address them.

The only thing "plausibe" I see is that something did something with a specific code page. I mean, text as such would be obtained in there under a certain "code" which causes it to be readable for you. For example, would it be chinese in there, the code(page) would be a different one because the characters are different.
But what would do such a thing. W10 failure ?

Edit : I did not tell it so explicitly, but I could see that all the "positions" as such where still in there. It is only that the normal characeters turned into spaces. You can just text search (via Notepad) for the spaces. If you Select All you will see the lines in there.

Regards,
Peter

I wonder what happens when you copy such a file to another PC and look at the contents from there.
I feel that it can be some kind of authorization issue, related to that password question you received.

Peter, will let you know what happens when I check the disc for errors with the procedure you provided above. Would certainly be great if the tracks reappear as you suggest they might. Again, thanks for your time on this!

Brian

To reset the date to Sept. 2 2015, I need to do that in the BIOS, yes?

Not necessarily. But it would be more clear to yourself what you are doing, and it will be less dependent on the OS herself which will change it again. So I better admit the Yes.

Peter

Hi Peter. I finally got around to trying the procedure you described below but I keep getting an Invalid parameter - /f:


Not sure why /f: is invalid parameter.

Am trying this hoping to get my playlist data back. Thanks in advance.

Brian

Brian - oops ... it is /f (not /f:)

I hope this helps !
Peter

Thanks, will give it a try this evening. Hope you and the family are having a fabulous vacation.

Brian

Data lost but disc scanned for errors, so it was worth the try.n Thanks

It is still the strangest thing I ever saw ...