Recovered, but doesn't open

[FabriCADed]

So last week we had a planned power outage that happened earlier than scheduled. Right when I was in the middle of plotting. Now, that drawing is toast. Trying to open it cad sits and spins it's "Not Responding" deal and sits that way until killed. I tried a recovery of the drawing and it recovers it, audit fixes 15 errors and then starts opening, but gets lost in a loop somewhere. I have an old backup with a day or two less work done in it that I'd like to avoid going back to, but could if needed. The actual .bak does the same thing as the dwg. Recovers, but never finishes opening. Every other drawing opens fine. Any thoughts on what I can do? Do I run through the recovery and just let it sit for an hour to see if it finally pulls out of whatever loop it is in? Thanks.

[CCarleton]

You can try the method of letting it sit and see if it ever processes, sometimes it really is thinking for a long time. Once I tried to import a surface from a point cloud that took about 4 hours to open because the surface wasn't simplified at all...which is the day I learned that if the import event is too large CAD will create multiple drawings to support it. I...uh...abandoned that drawing.

If you don't have the time to sit around and see there's probably two other things I can think of that I'd try.

1) Check the drawing's folders for previous versions by right clicking on it, going to properties, and looking at previous versions. Our server backup at 7AM and noon. Hopefully yours is set in a similar fashion where you can grab something from earlier in the day. Similarly I'd check the DWG for previous versions as well if the folder option doesn't work.
2) Contact your IT department and see if they can offer any assistance if the above doesn't work.

[tedg]

Just grasping at straws..
maybe try to insert it into a blank drawing file?
maybe change the extension to .dxf and see if that will let you open it?
or maybe yes.. try to run the recovery and let it work for a long time... then if it opens, purge the **** out of it and save it.

[FabriCADed]

1) Check the drawing's folders for previous versions by right clicking on it, going to properties, and looking at previous versions. Our server backup at 7AM and noon. Hopefully yours is set in a similar fashion where you can grab something from earlier in the day. Similarly I'd check the DWG for previous versions as well if the folder option doesn't work.

Yeah I did look for previous version. Unfortunately our IT department is mostly incompetent and so our server only backs up overnight, they also don't allow for "previous versions" in the traditional sense.

2) Contact your IT department and see if they can offer any assistance if the above doesn't work.

There's a reason our department mostly talks to me for IT problems. See above.

[FabriCADed]

Alright, I ended up letting it grind it out. It did after a couple of hours. I purged everything (and there was a lot of those *Uxxx blocks) then I saved it down. On trying to reopen it, it still had issues, so I inserted that drawing into a new drawing as a block, exploded it and, imported the sheets and boom there everything was. Seems to work okay, still a little slower than usual, but overall not too bad a recovery.

[MrVerryt]

If you still had a .bak file for the drawing, you could just rename it the file, and replace ".bak" with ".dwg" and if the file is not corrupted, it will open like a normal .dwg, and may be more recovered than even the drawing in the recovery manager. May want to try next time to see if this works for this situation, not sure exactly if it applies to what happened to you, but this has become a cool shortcut we use at my company when things like this happen.

[FabriCADed]

If you still had a .bak file for the drawing, you could just rename it the file, and replace ".bak" with ".dwg" and if the file is not corrupted, it will open like a normal .dwg, and may be more recovered than even the drawing in the recovery manager. May want to try next time to see if this works for this situation, not sure exactly if it applies to what happened to you, but this has become a cool shortcut we use at my company when things like this happen.

Yep, the .bak was corrupted too. It was the first thing I tried. I did find a previous version of the .bak and could have used that, but it was from hours previous. I opted to try and recover all the work done on the drawing. Thankfully I was able to.

[tedg]

Alright, I ended up letting it grind it out. It did after a couple of hours. I purged everything (and there was a lot of those *Uxxx blocks) then I saved it down. On trying to reopen it, it still had issues, so I inserted that drawing into a new drawing as a block, exploded it and, imported the sheets and boom there everything was. Seems to work okay, still a little slower than usual, but overall not too bad a recovery.

Good to hear, did you purge all the "Regapps" too? (registered applications that my be bogging down your drawing)
Those don't get purged with a regular purge, even if you purge all.

(command -purge > Regapps > *)
do that a couple times should help.

I have a lisp routine that does it 3 times and saves the dwg.

(defun c:specicalpurge ()
(setq ce (getvar "cmdecho"))
    (setvar "cmdecho" 0)
	(command "layer" "s" "0" "")
	(command "zoom"  "e"  "zoom"  ".9x" ) 
	(repeat 3 
	(command "._purge" "_A" "*" "_N")
	(command "purge" "regapps" "" "n"))
   (setvar "cmdecho" ce)
(command "_qsave")
(princ)
)

[rkmcswain]

Yep, the .bak was corrupted too. It was the first thing I tried. I did find a previous version of the .bak and could have used that, but it was from hours previous. I opted to try and recover all the work done on the drawing. Thankfully I was able to.

I don't understand how the .BAK file could be corrupted, presuming you think the corruption occurred to the .DWG because of the power outage.
The .BAK file would have been just sitting on disk, not doing anything. The power outage would not have affected the BAK at all.
Also, if you had autosave enabled, the .SV$ file will be in the autosave location (typically the %temp% folder), and it can be renamed to .DWG and tried.

If you are still interested, send me the "corrupt" drawing and I'd like to see if it opens with other (non-AutoCAD) applications.

[Julesagain]

I believe with 2018 Regapps are also purged with a regular purge.