What causes the dreaded "past its end" error???

[Kaotik]

I have a user that received the "past its end" error when trying to open a file this morning. I couldn't figure it out so I came here and ran a search. I got a list of results of thread after thread of basically the same thing over and over again. "the file is toast...go back to the most recent backup...send the file to support...its not recoverable". Well that sucks, but at least you all saved me time from trying to get the file recovered, so thanks!

My question is what the hecks causing this error??? I was hoping someone here knows and can let me know so i can tell everyone not to do whatever causes it. I appreciate any time spent helping me understand the cause for this error and thanks again for the support!

Sincerely,
Brian Andresen

[dan.dankert]

I also would love to know what steps could be done to minimize the chances of this happening also. We had one file working great at the end of Monday, dead Tuesday morning.
We only "lost" maybe 20-30 min of work, but still, it does not make the users happy.

Dan

[Steve_Stafford]

Not a conclusive answer but I believe it can be caused by either the application being closed unceremoniously (crash or End Task) or network failure to transfer data during a save. I used to see the same error using Microstation too. It has been a very long time since I've encountered this error in Revit.

[jcdecastro]

Someone got the same thing in my office.
No real answers on why it happens or more importantly how to prevent it.

[markl.70662]

If your saving your project file across a network then It's probably the virus software on the machine hosting the project file. We experienced this problem for some time and many corrupt files.

After disabling the virus software on our server the problem went away. We replaced the virus software with one that reputably impacted little on performance - haven't experienced the problem since.

Hope this helps....

[Wesley]

There are two primary possible causes:
1. particular anit-virus packages - eTrust and Vet (from memory) - definitely CA products
2. Using one machine as a 'file server' in a peer to peer environment - deadly to your files

Wes