Newsleecher just lost my settings! WFT?

tommo123 · Post by **tommo123** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 7:44 pm

downloaded something a few hours ago. closed the prog down. no reboot or anything,

opened it now and get the splash screen. 1st sign or problems

my server details are blank. why?
all my subbed groups are still in there.

i re-enter my server details and all the info to do with the groups is gone. new headers = 50 million+ - that's a lot of headers in a few hours since i last updated the damn thing.

can someone tell me what the hell could have happened?

thanks guys

Post by **Smudge** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:32 pm

NewsLeecher saves the configuration when it is shut down properly. It sounds like that didn't happen. If it crashed instead of quitting properly, it can corrupt your settings. What you have described is the common result of a corrupted setup.dat file.

now that you have set up the server info again, quit and restart to see if it saved properly. Most likely you will start up NewsLeecher again and the configurations will be gone again.

You will probably have to manually remove the setup.dat file. You can find the location and explanation of each configuration file at viewtopic.php?t=6766

Uninstalling and reinstalling will not remove the configuration files.

tommo123 · Post by **tommo123** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:36 pm

hi , after restarting the prog, it carried on working ok. no more data lost.

any chance of a backup feature? to save these files and access incase the main one is corrupt? kind of like a dual bios on a motherboard?

Post by **Smudge** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:42 pm

If you are using 3.95 beta 1 and later, the setup.dat files are backed up automatically so you can use a previous version. They are stored in the %APPDATA%\NewsLeecher\backups\ directory. Replace your corrupted setup.dat with one of these backups, renaming it properly of course.

tommo123 · Post by **tommo123** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:52 pm

found em. l have 10 in there from today

will give that a shot in future.

one thing that does cause probs for me is that i dont have the folder set to %appdata etc etc. I change the path to d:\newsleecher.....

i do that since it's easier to back things up and keep programs in checik. i hate it when all the settings get thrown into the users folder. What i have found though is that sometimes the folders change back to default (%appdata). wonder if it's something similar that happened tonight.

tommo123 · Post by **tommo123** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:59 am

well, it's just happened again. WTF is wrong with this thing. used it yesterday, closed it. opened it today and my servers are gone! pcs been on all night and day.

tried that setup.dat thing and after using a backup, everything is gone. no subscribed groups, no server details and the default folders are changed back to appdata etc etc.

looks like the only way to get around this is to copy the entire newsleecher directory. even then i've lost who knows how many days worth of header info and have to download it all over again.

the backups clearly dont have the info required.

tommo123 · Post by **tommo123** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 12:02 pm

question

why is it that even though the folders i have pointed to are on my D drive, is there a newsleecher folder under appdata still? i have removed it and after adding my server info again, it's back again.?

looks like its ignoring the specified folders and going to appdata still

Post by **Smudge** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:37 pm

NewsLeecher will use appdata to save the setup.dat file since it has to be somewhere. that config file will then tell NewsLeecher where to save the other files per the Options>Advanced>Folders settings.

If you don't want NewsLeecher to use appdata on C at all, you will need to create a .ini file in the same directory as the newsleecher.exe. You can read the proper format of the file in this FAQ

tommo123 · Post by **tommo123** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:23 pm

will give it a try, thing is though, why doesnt it just put all the files it needs in the folder i specify to install to by default? the same folder i tell it to use instead of %appdata%?

if newsleecher couldnt write anything to the users folders what would happen then?

Post by **Smudge** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 4:18 am

think about it. without the ini file, how would NewsLeecher know where to look for the config file except the default location?

We used to save the configs in the same directory as the NewsLeecher application but normal users don't have permission to write in there so the were moved to each user's own profile directory. since they own it, they should have write access. Even though this is Microsoft's recommended location, they stupidly make the directory hidden from users. damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Anyways, by setting the ini then running NewsLeecher, it will create the setup.dat in that location. You then configure NewsLeecher (with that new setup.dat) to point the temp and data directories elsewhere as well. Once you quit and restart NewsLeecher, it will only use these alternate locations. You can delete the old files/folders from the appdata dir.

Only time NewsLeecher would then go back to the appdata dir is if it can't read the ini or the setup.dat in the alternate location.

tommo123 · Post by **tommo123** » Sat Apr 25, 2009 7:18 pm

belated reply smudge but wanted to thank you

i just installed the latest windows 7 and hadnt done this yet so obviously all the data i had was gone when i ran newsleecher in this new install of windows. i added that ini file, changed the locale to d:\newsleecher\setup.dat, and copied and pasted the dat file from my old users dir and whalla. all the server info, downloads that were there before - was there again

ta again