Missing notes

[Quorthon]

Hi there.

I downloaded the portable version of CintaNotes and created some notes - easy peasy so far!

A few days later I decided to change to the non-portable version.

I wasn't expecting any problems as I believed the portable version should not be saving anywhere else on the computer. When I run the newly installed version there are no notes shown, which is what I expected, but there is no way to import them from the portable version. I knew there was an export option, so should there not be an import option too?

I decided to go back to the portable version and found that the notes were missing from that too . There was a warning about attempting to run two instances of the program so I made sure that the non-portable version was shut, then re-started the portable version. Still no notes. Where are they stored on the computer? I have found notebook.dat but that doesn't seem to help, I tried by dropping it back into the portable folder and restarting

Any help much appreciated!

[eiphinia]

Just copy the file notebook.dat from your Portable CN Folder to the folder you installed non-portable version newly(default in C:\Program Files\CintaNotes\).

Import Feature seems still in development...

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hello Quorthon,

I wasn't expecting any problems as I believed the portable version should not be saving anywhere else on the computer. When I run the newly installed version there are no notes shown, which is what I expected, but there is no way to import them from the portable version. I knew there was an export option, so should there not be an import option too?

eiphinia is correct, the import function is in development.

I decided to go back to the portable version and found that the notes were missing from that too . There was a warning about attempting to run two instances of the program so I made sure that the non-portable version was shut, then re-started the portable version. Still no notes. Where are they stored on the computer? I have found notebook.dat but that doesn't seem to help, I tried by dropping it back into the portable folder and restarting

You should make sure that you are truly restarting, since CintaNotes can just sit in the system tray and therefore you might have been running the (empty) non-portable version when you thought you were running the portable version.

All notes are stored in the notebook.dat file in the application folder. To transfer notes from portable to the non-portable version, just copy the notebook.dat file.

Actually the only difference between the portable and non-portable versions of CintaNotes is the installer. The executable is the same.
Hope this helps. Please keep us informed how you're doing!

[Quorthon]

Just copy the file notebook.dat from your Portable CN Folder to the folder you installed non-portable version newly(default in C:\Program Files\CintaNotes\).

Import Feature seems still in development...

Unfortunately both the notebook.dat's left on my computer are the same 63 byte "empty" file that a newly run version of the program seems to create in it's folder. I am not sure what happened but I have searched the whole drive using Search Everything http://www.voidtools.com/and only these empty files exist. Maybe I was careless and drag'n'dropped the wrong version from one folder to another when trying to fix things

It's not the end of the world. I have most of the stuff on Google Notebook. I can copy and paste over all but the most recent stuff.

Thanks to both of you for the quick reply, though.

[CintaNotes Developer]

I think this is what might have happened:
When you run the non-portable version, it created an empty notebook file. Then you closed the non-portable version but it was still sitting in the system tray. So when you ran the portable version, you just activated the already running non-portable version (with no notes) - and CintaNotes told you about that with the warning. Then you copied the notebook.dat file from the non-portable version to the portable, thus overwriting your notes...

Does this seem plausible?

[gman_au]

I am using the portable version of cinta notes beta 5. It appears all of my notes are gone....everything appeared OK when I shut the app down last time. But when i attempted to start the app today i get an error "Invalid signature" when i try to run the app. I checked the notebook.dat file and it says its 200K (the file was a lot bigger than that before), and it appears to be empty if i view it in notepad, so there must be a lot of control characters in there which i assume has come from some sort of corruption.

If I rename the notebook.dat file the app works fine with no errors, but of course it says it is empty.

I don't have a backup of this file, and i get the feeling i've lost all of my notes which is very disappointing.

It's a long shot but is there any temporary file anywhere that i can get my notes back from? If not may i suggest that an backup (automatic?) option be created in the app.

[CintaNotes Developer]

I don't have a backup of this file, and i get the feeling i've lost all of my notes which is very disappointing.
It's a long shot but is there any temporary file anywhere that i can get my notes back from? If not may i suggest that an backup (automatic?) option be created in the app.

I'm afraid this version of CintaNotes doesn't make neither backups nor temporary copies yet. I am really sorry for your notes and assure you that some kind of automatic backup will appear already in the next version BetaM7, which will come out around Feb 20.

I think there's still some hope, since the control characters are normal for notebook.dat. If you could send me your notebook.dat to bug@cintanotes.com, I can attempt to recover at least some of your notes and will send you a readable notebook.dat back. Thanks!

Also I'd like to find out the reason of corruption. Could you please answer the questions below:
1) Have you run CintaNotes directly from a USB stick?
2) If so, have you properly stopped the device before unplugging?
3) Have you explicitly exited CintaNotes or just shut the PC down?

Thank you very much!

[Noddy330]

Would it be useful if there were a command to cleanly close any running instances of CintaNotes?
I would use it in a BAT file that runs "SysInternals Sync 2.2: Disk Flusher for Windows 9x/Me/NT/2K/XP" on all my USB ports just before closing down my system.
I'm running M6.4 from a memory Stick.
Nod

[gman_au]

First off thanks for the reply! And please find below the answer to your questions

1) Have you run CintaNotes directly from a USB stick?

- Yes i run it from a USB stick

2) If so, have you properly stopped the device before unplugging?

- I exited the app (using File->Exit) but most probably just pulled the USB stick out rather than using
safely remove hardware

3) Have you explicitly exited CintaNotes or just shut the PC down?

- I explicitly exited Cinta Notes.

I looked in the file using a hex editor and all is see is NUL characters. Would you still like to check the file?

I downloaded the new version (Beta 6) and have been busily re-entering any notes I can remember, so hopefully it wont happen again. (actually I've set up an automated backup job now, so even if it does i'll just loose a days data)

It's a great app and very useful which meant i was becoming dependent on it, as i was putting more and more stuff in there, which is why it was a big loss when that file got corrupted.

Even if the corruption didn't come from cinta itself, I do think an internal backup from the app itself will greatly improve it's resistance to corruption of any kind.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Terribly sorry couldn't get to you sooner,

actually your answers tell me that the corruption may really have been caused by "hot-unplugging" of the device, due to write caching.
I've double-checked the file handling code, tried it with several program instances, but could not reproduce the problem.
Again, I'm really sorry for your notes, and soon Beta M7 will come out featuring automatic backups.
Before that, it might be useful to configure Windows Scheduler to backup notebook.dat on a regular basis.
Or you might opt for putting CintaNotes in a DropBox folder (http://www.getdropbox.com), this way each time something changes, notebook.dat will be uploaded to your account, with versioning support etc. (this is also very useful for keeping several CN instances in sync).
Thanks for your patience and I hope to hear from you sometime!

[CintaNotes Developer]

Would it be useful if there were a command to cleanly close any running instances of CintaNotes?

Yes, sure. Nice. Thanks for the info.
Of course, I strongly believe that the File/Exit command per se is already a good enough reason for closing as cleanly as possible. But the problem here is also with the OS that leaves write requests hanging in the air even while the target device is clearly idle.
But I guess I will need to investigate this issue further.

[Noddy330]

Would it be useful if there were a command to cleanly close any running instances of CintaNotes?

Yes, sure. Nice. Thanks for the info.
Of course, I strongly believe that the File/Exit command per se is already a good enough reason for closing as cleanly as possible. But the problem here is also with the OS that leaves write requests hanging in the air even while the target device is clearly idle.
But I guess I will need to investigate this issue further.

Would it not be possible for File /Exit to force all unterminated writes to a USB device to complete?
Sync from SysInternals is able to do this.
Nod

[CintaNotes Developer]

Would it not be possible for File /Exit to force all unterminated writes to a USB device to complete?
Sync from SysInternals is able to do this.
Nod

Yes, I guess it should be possible. I'll investigate it further.