Author Topic: Updates corrupting program settings and preferences  (Read 1540 times)

JMBare

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Updates corrupting program settings and preferences
« on: October 11, 2020, 10:52:33 AM »
Hello,

The last couple of updates have caused some chaos in the normalcy of my tournament settings, but this last one reeked havoc on my files.

1.) user preferences were all lost.  All of them.
2.) database settings were corrupted.  Somehow, the player images defaulted to old pictures.  I had made updates to the images and none of them were saved.
3.) and this is the most frustrating one, season settings were dropped from previously saved, completed games.  The stats profiles were not properly updating, so I opened some older tournaments and there were no season settings saved to them.

This was just last night that we played, I will open the program back up later today and go back and reset a bunch of stuff, but that’s what I came across so far.

Corey Cooper

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Re: Updates corrupting program settings and preferences
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2020, 03:48:26 PM »
Sorry I missed this post.  And sorry you're having trouble.  Not to doubt you're experiencing some issues, but let me at least clear one thing up: When an update occurs, only the application itself is updated.  User preferences, player database, saved tournaments and templates are all unaffected.  This has always been true, and hasn't changed from version 1.3 all the way through over 35 versions to today's version 3.7.2.  Even when you uninstall the application, your settings remain.  If you really want to get rid of the TD completely from a PC, it takes some manual steps because the application itself won't touch your settings.

If there's something "wrong" with the preferences file, the application will warn about it upon startup, and then will create a new preferences file with all default preferences.  This doesn't necessarily explain what went wrong, but it does explain how you ended up with default preferences.

No idea what may have happened to the database, but I can assure you the software didn't change it on update.  I suspect that you may have a copy of the database somewhere (in a different Data Store, for example), and when the preferences were reset, the software changed to a different Data Store, one that had the players but did not have the player images.  This is obviously just a guess.

As for season settings in previously saved tournaments, this would require the software actually load, one-by-one, each of your previously saved tournaments, remove the season settings, and re-save it.

One things that COULD have happened: you've inadvertently run version 3.4 (or another version earlier than 3.7) after installing and running version 3.7.  This is an unfortunate possibility, and is pretty common, due to the new framework and installation mechanism in version 3.7.  When you download and install version 3.7, any previous version you have installed is NOT upgraded or removed.  It's still there.  Version 3.7 installs new shortcuts, too, so the shortcuts to version 3.4 still remain.  So you can see how it would be very easy to open the older version.  Because version 3.4 and version 3.7 look very similar, if you accidentally open version 3.4 instead of version 3.7, it's very possible you won't even notice.  However, after you've run version 3.7 (which happens automatically after it is installed), the preferences file will be rewritten when the application is closed.  After that, version 3.4 won't be able to read the preferences file, since it is in a new format.  So if you accidentally ran version 3.4 after that, version 3.4 would fail to load the preferences file and would re-create it with default preferences.  This would mean losing all custom preferences and all Stats Profiles.  It could also mean the application was now using a different Data Store (if you had more than one).  So this could explain most of what you're seeing.

While the new framework and installation is vastly superior to the old one, this was an unfortunate and unavoidable side-effect (not "upgrading" or removing the older version).  On the positive side, going forward I think all upgrades will work as we have come to expect: upgrading will replace your existing version of the TD.

I recommend uninstalling any previous versions to prevent this from happening.  When you open the "Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet (or "Apps & features" or "Programs & features", depending on which version of Windows you're running), you should see two Tournament Director applications installed:

The Tournament Director 3
The Tournament Director 3.7.2

Uninstall "The Tournament Director 3".  That's the old version.  New versions have the version number in their name, as noted above, and upgrading should remove the current version and install the new version.

We may be able to restore those preferences.  When the application can't read the preferences file, it renames the "bad" file before creating a new one.  In Windows File Explorer, go to your Documents folder, then open the folder "The Tournament Director 2".  Look for a file whose name looks like this: prefs.sav.20200929-090258.  That last part is the date and time.  If you find any, those were saved when the application was unable to load the preferences.  You can rename the existing prefs.sav (to keep it, just in case), and rename the prefs file with the timestamp to just prefs.sav and the run the TD.  Make sure you've removed the old TD first to avoid any confusion or issues.

JMBare

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Re: Updates corrupting program settings and preferences
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2020, 10:57:45 PM »
Thank you, sir!

JCalamis

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Re: Updates corrupting program settings and preferences
« Reply #3 on: November 09, 2020, 03:54:13 PM »
I too have lost all of my files. We played last on 10/9.  I went in to setup a game for 11/ 13 and I have no files. No players, no templates, no saves, nothing! Can someone help to locate my files?