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[mermonkey]

hiya,
Anyone ever seen this b4? I imported some new files, was playing them, and crashed. When i rebooted, all my custom categories (lots), were gone. None of the tracks show the custom cats under props and none of them show up under the Categories tree when expanded. Strangely, the categories must still be known on some internal level because my smart lists all work. What's up? Anyone? Anyone? Should i restore my last DB?
thanks!
mer.

[hiredirects]

This happens to me all the time and it is frustrating because I have a LOT of customized categories.  My only solution is that I backup almost daily - at least everytime I make a major addition to may categories.

I hope it helps,
HD

[mermonkey]

hmmmm, thanks for the speedy response! I guess i'll have to start backing up more often...
So, do you get the same symptom where your smart lists still work?
cheers!,
mer.

[hiredirects]

I don't know becasue I don't use smartlist that much, mostly I use them as categories and "groups."  But, I have two different symptoms:

1. All the categories end up totally gone, with only the default ones left.
2. My categories are there, but empty.

So, I BUP a lot, but check my categories first to make sure they are populated.  If not, I restore the most recent MJ backup.  The nice thing about the BUP feature of MJ, is that it is a zip file, and the date is in the name.  And because the BUPs are so small, I keep all of them.

Cheers,
HD

[lise]

I noticed this, especially after upgrading to a new version.  I think that for some reason MJ opens to a default library, rather than the last one I was using before upgrading (and perhaps crashing?).  Whenever I notice the my library isn't up to par, I simply load it again via Library manager.  I don't know if this makes a difference, but my libraries are not kept in the jriver folder.  Perhaps if they were, I would have to keep loading them with each upgrade... I think I'll test that.

[mermonkey]

ack! it's happened to me again! Only this time, i can't find a good backup to revert to! I made the mistake of backing up after importing some new stuff w/o checking that my catergories were still intact and i overwrote my old catergories.jmd file. Now instead of my beautiful custom catergories, i have the mj defaults... help?
In a previous comment, hiredirects says that his/her BUPs (back-ups?) are zip files. Hmmm, i just seem to get .jmd files... i'm on 7.2.280 which claims to be the latest non-beta. Are we using different back-up features? I use file::backup library.
In any case, if i can't recover from this, i will have lost more hours than i care to consider.
There must be a way to recover them! My smartlists still work, but the queries can't be viewed, so the data is hidden in there somewhere... Magic.
Any ideas appreciated.
thanks in advance,
stu.

[mermonkey]

Well, maybe good time to export my playlists and revisit the competition...

[Matt]

Media Jukebox 8 has a more secure database engine.  I'd recommend upgrading if you get a chance.  Please be patient though, because there are still bugs remaining in 8, hence the "beta" label.

Thank you.

-Matt

[mermonkey]

Thanks for the info Matt. Will upgrading to v8 only keep this from happening in the future? or will it actually be able to recover my catergories? How are they actually stored in the DB?
My understanding was that my smart playlists were generated dynamically. If this is true, than my catagorical information is still alive in some form because my smartlists are intact...
There is a lot of info at stake here (probably about 3,000/8,000 of my tracks had been categorized using a complex set of interlocking criteria...), i'm willing to try most anything - including DB hackery. What DB is mj built on top of?
cheers!,
stu.

[mermonkey]

i hate to reply to my own topic twice in a row... but i'm desperate!! Really. If anyone can give any answers to my questions above, i would appreciate it. If not, i've lost aloooooot of time organizing my music.
Are there any tools i can get to mine my mj db?
thanks....

[Scronch]

Like many others, I keep many, many library backups.  Using MJ7.2, before backing up, I create a subdirectory in my backup directory.  The subdirectory is named the current date, e.g. Backup020324.  Then I backup into that directory.  I also keep the .exe install files for previous versions of MJ.  There was some talk of MJ8 automatically allowing new backup directories, but I don't know if it's in there (I'm staying at 7 for now).  Anyway, all of this is just good sense, if you've ever been burned with any program.

Scronch

[mermonkey]

ok, thanks for the reply Scronch...
Anyone have an suggestions as to how i can mine my categories out of my DB?