Reference Guide

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I can’t open my project / File Recovery mode
Troubleshooting
I can’t open my project / File Recovery mode
SONAR 5 introduced a special diagnostic mode called Safe Mode to fix problems with project files
that would not open. Safe mode is activated when you open a file while the SHIFT key is pressed.
In certain rare circumstances, on attempting to open a project file you may see the following error
message:
“This file you are trying to open is not compatible with this version of SONAR”.
This message indicates that SONAR detected errors in the project file and was unable to open it.
This normally indicates that your project file has data corruption.
Data corruption on a DAW can occur due to various reasons, a few of which include:
• Your hard drive might suffer data loss.
• Windows delayed writes might fail leading to data corruption.
• Many hard disks have a “write through cache” buffer for efficiency. Occasionally this write through
buffer might not get flushed due to a driver error or system crash. In such cases data might not be
flushed to your hard driver causing corrupt files (SONAR requests Windows to flush this buffer
after a file save operation).
• A plug-in can corrupt SONAR's memory space causing invalid data to be written to disk when the
project is saved.
• During a file save the system can crash. In such situations, you will have a truncated file on disk.
You save a “recovery file” through SONAR's crash exception dialog box. When a crash occurs in
SONAR, you are presented with this dialog box allowing you to attempt to save a recovery file.
While this works most of the time, occasionally SONAR may be in a compromised state due to
memory corruption. Under these circumstances, saving a file might cause a crash or the file might
contain invalid data.
In general, the best insurance against the data corruption scenarios above is to follow standard safe
computing practices to guard against data loss (keep regular backups, use autosave with
versioning, etc.). However, occasionally you may be faced with a situation where you do not have a
backup copy of a critical project that now fails to open.
SONAR's File Recovery Mode offers a means to help recover data from damaged project files.
To use File Recovery mode
Do one of the following:
• If you are opening a file from the Most Recently Used files list in the File menu, hold down the
SHIFT key while selecting file name.
• If you are opening the file from the Open dialog box, select the file in the dialog box and hold
down the SHIFT key while clicking the OK button.
What does File Recovery mode do?
File Recovery Mode applies the following behavior when opening a project file: