ARGHH! Actinic will not start

[PeterThake]

Well I was just tidying up my layouts and created a new variable to set the number of columns and was about to use this new variable when Actnic encountered an error and had to close. That was the good news!

Now when I start Actinic it goes through the usual startup routine, gets to a point and then reports an error and says it has to close. It never gets any further.

The only other info I have is this, taken from the report sent to Microsoft.

AppName: catalog.exe AppVer: 8.5.0.0 ModName: catalog.exe
ModVer: 8.5.0.0 Offset: 00172a99

I tried rebooting. No change.

I am not sure when I last backed up.

Where do I go from here?

"Dear God (or any higher authority that might hear these words),
Give me this day my Actinic shop,
Let it not crumble to bytes,
Make it robust and stable too,
Lead me not to the temptation of other e-commerce packages...
For I just want to sell yoyos..."

Sigh.

[Duncan Rounding]

Someone may know better but this is what I would try...

If you do not have multisite then copy all of your site 1 folder to a safe backup location. Unistall and reinstall Actinic - same version as you were running. Import your last snapshot, close Actinic and then copy your site1 folder back over, overwriting the contents. And hope.

If you have multisite then run the command line utility to force Actinic to open another site and then swap sites iin Actinic back to the one you want. Again - and hope.

If this doesn't work then you may need to send Actinic support your snapshot or mdb and have it checked out.

[TraceyHand]

could you try "compact and repair" on the database through Access?
Might this help? (I'm asking because I'm not sure and I'm hoping someone else will agree or disagree LOL)

[Duncan Rounding]

could you try "compact and repair" on the database through Access?
Might this help? (I'm asking because I'm not sure and I'm hoping someone else will agree or disagree LOL)

Yes worth a try - after backup up th actinic.mdb file mind.

[PeterThake]

Heres hoping...

Duncan, I do have multi-site but I only have one site so far. I rather pleased about that right now!

Which would you try - reinstalling or using the command line utility to force Actinic to open another site? If the latter, is this info in the Advanced user guide?

Where are the snapshots held by default?

Tracey, I thought the same! May try if all else fails...

[Duncan Rounding]

This order if it was me.

1. Backup up your site folder.
2. Try what Tracey suggests - MSAccess compact and repair.
3. Try using the command line to open your site - details in forum and in the Actinic help file - you can open this outside of Actinic by finding the file ActinicMainHelp.chm - it will open on double-click.
4. Try unsinatlling and reinstalling as mentioned above posting.
5. Actinic support tomorrow morning.

The snapshots will be saved wherever you put them when you made them. Search for *.acd

[PeterThake]

Waste of more precious hours of a life...

I think I have almost sorted this out. Here is a few notes in case this happens to anyone else. Once I had tried compacting and repairing the access database using Access, I then tried all the command-line startups I could find the documentation for. This did not get Actinic working again so I then did this:

1. Back up the entire Actinic directory to a new folder.
2. Uninstall Actinic.
3. Manually delete the Actinic folders and contents (uninstall seems to leave them there)
4. Reinstall Actinic
5. Load the last saved snapshot.
6. Download any new orders and take hard copies.
7. Because my snapshot was a week out of date (lesson learned - take more snapshots!) I then copied the old Access database file from the old Actinic directory (the one I backed up in step one) into the new Actinic folder. Not sure if this is an advisable thing to do, but I was desperate!
7. Restart Actinic. Reset the theme, revert any changed layouts to factory settings, remove all references in layouts to the new variable that I created, delete new variable that I created that crashed Actinic, download new orders, rebuild custom layouts, get shop looking reasonably ok again. Cross fingers. Upload. Test.

Note: it was pretty late by the time I got to step 7 and so the details are hazy and not necessarily performed in the order given!

What really worries me is that I was using the Actinic GUI to create a new variable and add this to a custom layout, nothing too out of the ordinary, when the application hung and then would not restart. Actinic seemed to be stuck in a loop like it was reaching the point during startup where it was trying to generate the layout with the new variable and was falling over again. I have experienced a slight loss of confidence!