AutoCAD File Corruption after installing 1.4.1.935

[deckertech]

Hello, I am brand new to the forum. I have been using Everything on a basic level for a few years now.

Last night, I deployed Everything on a domain network from the domain controller for about 15 users. I then configured each user workstation to index "A:\" and "P:\" drives which are mapped back to the file server. I configured Everything to index these drives every 6 hours.

This is a Civil Engineer office, so in the morning I got reports from several users that their drawing files were corrupted upon opening. The strange thing is we recovered the file in question from the last save that occurred 10 minutes prior to the corruption, and it worked fine.

This same scenario occurred for 3 other users throughout the day. The machines are all running Windows 10 Pro 1803 OS Build 17134.706. No Windows updates have been installed recently, and Everything was the most recent change on each machine.

I did a brief search on this forum for similar events, but didn't find anything matching Autodesk software issues.

Is the way I configured Everything causing the corruption? Is this even a possibility? I am just learning about using an ETP server to provide a central index for multiple users.

Thanks for the help, I am mainly just trying to rule things out at this point.

[void]

Thanks for your post.

Sorry to hear about the file corruption.

Everything doesn't modify indexed files.
Everything only reads file name, size, date modified, date created and attributes.

Are you running Everything on your clients as administrator? -Are users launching AutoCAD files from Everything as administrator?

Check your network load, is Everything overloading your network? How many files does Everything index?

Check your disks for errors and smart errors. -Everything reading file information that has not been read in a long time might be finding bit rot, or could be causing sector reallocation.

[deckertech]

Thank you for the quick response!

I think you may be on to something with network load. Right now, 1,145,055 objects are being indexed every 6 hours from about 15 machines. I'll look in to getting historical metrics for network load.

Each client has local admin privileges and they are running Everything as such.

Nobody is launching CAD files directly from Everything.

The file server is only about 2 years old with a 5-disk SSD RAID 5 array, but I will run checks on the disks.

For now, I am disabling Everything's indexing to see if that stops the corruption reports from users.

[therube]

their drawing files were corrupted upon opening. The strange thing is we recovered the file in question from the last save that occurred 10 minutes prior to the corruption, and it worked fine.

Did you compare the corrupt/non-corrupt files?
Were their sizes the same? Date timestamps?
And physical compare/inspection of the files showed what?

[deckertech]

I've had some time to further investigate this issue. I disabled all indexing of the company data on users's Workstations by Everything, and so far, no issues have been reported.

Did you compare the corrupt/non-corrupt files?

Yes, the engineers reported in the corrupted files that all of their line work was missing, and links for cross-referenced (XREFS) files were no longer linked. Running built-in recovery function in Civil 3D 2019 software finds 500+ errors. Even after repairing the file using the built-in utility, the drawing was empty: No layouts, and a couple dozen bad layers.

Were their sizes the same? Date timestamps?

No, a corrupted file from 04 16 2019 at 15:09 was size: 26.46MB

Recovering a previous version from 04 15 2019 at 11:05 was size: 35.43MB - This version worked fine.

And physical compare/inspection of the files showed what?

Aside from size and contents of the recovered vs corrupted, what other info would you like?

Thanks for your responses!

[therube]

Aside from size and contents of the recovered vs corrupted, what other info would you like?

I guess that basically, the corrupt file, even though corrupt, had contents that appeared like it belonged to the file in question?
Does the corrupt file have a (magic) "header" (AC | $4143$) that would seem to indicate that it is an AutoCAD file (.dwg)?
Does the corrupt file have textual data that you might expect to find in the particular file (rather then more random, unexpected data)?
(AcDbDictionary, AutoCAD 2000FPX, AcDbLongTransactionID, PAPER_SPACE, SQUARE TENDERDECK, CORKSCREW, FILEPOLE, BRIDGERAMP, DIMENSIONSF, FIXED, TREES, FENCE, TITLEBLOCK, FURNISHINGS, CONCRETE, FOOTING, SAFETYZONE, NEWCONTOUR, BASELINE, ...)


Maybe explain the methodology used in your opening of the files, & how Everything plays into that methodology?

[deckertech]

So I've done a bit more digging in to the issue:

The corrupted file when opened in Civil 3D 2019 is essentially blank. There is no data whatsoever, and it is like opening a new drawing file. However, the file size between one instance of corrupted and working files are slightly different. The corrupted file is 2,716KB smaller than the working file.

The strange thing is that the corrupted file, while appearing blank upon opening, is still showing that it is 18,656 KB in size.

Does the corrupt file have a (magic) "header" (AC | $4143$) that would seem to indicate that it is an AutoCAD file (.dwg)?

I am not sure how to check for that. Sorry!

Does the corrupt file have textual data that you might expect to find in the particular file (rather then more random, unexpected data)?

Nope, it's just blank.

Maybe explain the methodology used in your opening of the files, & how Everything plays into that methodology?

Sure. Workstations all have "P:\" drives mapped back to the fileserver. Users either open .dwg files by either double clicking from Windows Explorer, or open via 'Recent" files directly within Civil 3D 2019

The idea behind using Everything was originally to provide a simple way to search their "P:\" (production) files and also "A:\" (archive) files from a single window. Once the user finds the file(s) they are looking for, they were instructed to use the "Open Path" function in Everything, and subsequently open the file from Windows Explorer.

You may find this article that details organization of the .dwg file format to be helpful. Pertinent info begins on page 71: https://www.opendesign.com/files/guestd ... _files.pdf

It's largely Greek to me, but may be of use to you.

I'm really hoping that Everything wasn't cause for the corruption because it's a fantastic program! I am going to reconfigure indexing using an ETP server instead to see if that fixes the issue. I plan to deploy in a test environment first though.

My only working theory right now is that somehow Everything's indexing "interrupted" the saving of a file due to indexing being in progress at the time of the save? Perhaps it interfered with the .dwl and .dwl2 "temp" files that are created for crash recovery while a drawing is open?

Let me know if I can get you any other info. Thanks again for sticking with me!

[w64bit]

Sorry that I intervene with some corrections.
.dwl and .dwl2 files that are not created for crash recovery while a drawing is open.
They are created so another user (USER 2) who wants to open the same file (which is opened by USER 1) to receive the message that the file is already opened (by USER 1).
.dwl and .dwl2 files have the same content (one is written in plain text, one in XML).

Try RECOVER (and not open) the smaller, corrupted DWG file.

[YooperJeff]

I am having a similar problem. AutoCAD 2018, AutoCAD LT 2019 & AutoCAD LT 2020 files are all getting corrupted if I end up closing the file too soon after saving.
Everything is setup on my workstation only - no one else on our network is having this issue. Everything is set to run in the background (on my machine) as a service. It's been set to index the main jobs folder on the server. Everything says it is indexing 689,598 objects.

I wonder if adding *.dwg, *.dwl, *.dwl2, *.bak to the exclusions list would help in this case. I'm also going to remove my user account Temp folder.
Personally, I don't need to index these files. I'm going to try it and report back.
After adding these exclusions, my object count is: 615,853.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

[therube]

files are all getting corrupted if I end up closing the file too soon after saving

Explain?
You tell the file to save, then what?
What happens if you do that what & what happens if you wait before doing that what?
How long do you need to wait?

Everything is set to ... index the main jobs folder on the server.

And the server is NTFS or other?
And if other, you're using a Folder Index?

I'm also going to remove my user account Temp folder.

Are you speaking of %TMP%?
And if you do that, you'll still have a "TMP", somewhere?

How do you go about opening your .dwg?
Double-click from within Everything?
From within AC or Windows Explorer?


Avoid problems that can cause drawing file corruption or data loss
Error: "Drawing file is not valid" when opening a file in AutoCAD
Understanding backup and autosave files in AutoCAD

[deckertech]

Hi Yooper,

Interesting! I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing issues with Everything and AutoCAD files. I can confirm that after I stopped Everything's indexing of the company data on the fileserver last week, that all file corruption stopped.

It seems as though Everything may be interrupting the saving process for .dwg files on your end? In my case, recovering the file by changing the .bak version to a .dwg was able to recover the file back to its last working status. In some cases though, we had to recover previous versions from a backup.

I'm going to try to set up an ETP server and use one central index for all user workstations to query instead of having Everything index the fileserver from each user's workstation.

In my scenario, the working theory is that having 15 user workstations all indexing the fileserver at once caused a network overload which left little/no bandwidth to write saves to the files.

However, if you're experiencing corruption on just your workstation, I'm not sure that theory works out.

Either way, I hope we're providing enough info to the Void crew to look further in to the issue because using Everything is a great solution for searching multiple locations in our environment.

[Plumcrazy]

Although I have not been able to show this is what is causing the problem, it does seem very possible to me. However one of the suggestions of turning off indexing on the network folders would be the same as telling us to just uninstall it...and we definitely don't want to do that!
Has any more progress been made from Voidtools or anyone else on a good solution for this? Everything is an absolutely wonderful tool and we sure want to find a fix/workaround for this...

[deckertech]

Hi Plum!

Thanks for the reply which reminded me to post my solution for this issue!

I successfully configured an ETP server that indexes all of the fileserver's data. I re-installed Everything on all of the user workstations, and pointed them to the ETP Server on the network.

I have had the ETP server in place for at least 2 weeks now with no reports of file corruption.

It is looking like network overload was most likely the culprit that caused the initial corruption. It is plausible to me because having 15 workstations all indexing over 1 million objects on the fileserver at the same time would likely generate some serious network overhead.

I hope that helps you find a solution!

[void]

For anyone still having trouble with corrupt AutoCAD files:

I suspect the AutoCAD icon handler is corrupting the file.

Please try disabling icon shell extensions:

• In Everything, type in the following search and press ENTER:
  /icon_shell_extensions=0
• If successful, you should see icon_shell_extensions=0 in the status bar for a few seconds.

Please let me know if the issue persists.

[Peter2]

Hi

it's my first time here ...

I just started to read about Everything, have tons of DWGs too and would also be very interested if this feature works now without issues..

[deckertech]

Hello!

I am OP. I can verify that running an ETP server has solved this organization's issues using Everything. I have had virtually no issues with data corruption with this organization which is a Civil Engineer firm, and have MANY DWGs. One user managed to turn on case sensitivity for searching, and thought it was broken, but that's about it.

If you have issues, you may want to implement the fix that Void suggested above which is to disable icon shell extensions.

Cheers/

[Peter2]

...If you have issues, you may want to implement the fix that Void suggested above which is to disable icon shell extensions....

How can I test it without causing a disaster? I don't want to run it on my network share and destroy hundreds of DWGs

[deckertech]

...If you have issues, you may want to implement the fix that Void suggested above which is to disable icon shell extensions....

How can I test it without causing a disaster? I don't want to run it on my network share and destroy hundreds of DWGs

Hi Peter, can you copy a portion of the data set to a controlled lab network environment? In the lab, set up an ETP server, and have it index that data set, and then try the disable icon shell extensions command. Monitor the data set as necessary. If tests are successful, then copy those settings to your production network.

[Peter2]

...try the disable icon shell extensions command...

Thanks, deckertech
Is this a setting inside Everything or a setting of the server where ETP is running?

[therube]

Please try disabling icon shell extensions:

• In Everything, type in the following search and press ENTER:

/icon_shell_extensions=0

• If successful, you should see icon_shell_extensions=0 in the status bar for a few seconds.

[Peter2]

Thanks.

[void]

ETP does not support icon shell extensions.

When using ETP, icon shell extensions is always disabled.

[Peter2]

Maybe the knowledge relating Autocad/DWG should / could be condensed in a few lines in "Troubleshooting" or "FAQ"?

[dkvlnk]

So does it fixed on the newer version (current is 1.4.1.969)? I'm texting command in search field but nothing happens.

[therube]

Nothing happens except for a temporary response, display in the Everything statusbar, so you need to be looking there.

[NotNull]

So does it fixed on the newer version (current is 1.4.1.969)? I'm texting command in search field but nothing happens.

Nothing happens except for a temporary response, display in the Everything statusbar, so you need to be looking there.

.. and don't forget to press ENTER after entering the command.