Corrupt cpd and TOC problem

[GOGOJO]

I know this is an old issue and I have tried solving it using info from these forums and KnowledgeBase ... however, we are still having a problem.

We are using Robo8.  For some reason today, a large project got a corrupt cpd error message.  So we RENAMED the cpd file (I followed Peter Grainge's help on his site).  Now we are trying to open the project using the xpj file and nothing is happening - just sitting there.  Why does this happen?  Is there some way of preventing it?

Earlier, we had deleted the cpd and the xpj files, but tht TOC was gone!  We have copies of everything, so we made another copy and then just renamed the cpd w/o deleting anything.  I am afraid to go further and don't know what to try.

Has Adobe discovered anything significant about this recurring nightmare??

Thanks!

[Guest]

Jaws,

This appears to be the same problem I've been experiencing. The .cpd file grew exponentially with each compiled version, to the point where it became corrupt. While building files, RH8 often crashes -- and I have the distinct feeling that contributes to the issue as well. When does it crash? Very often when doing a drag-and-drop of a baggage file into a topic page; however, that is not the only thing that causes it to crash.

When I renamed/deleted or in any way modified the .cpd file, about half of the project folders and their topic files disappeared from the project manager folder. About half of the baggage files and folders also disappeared, along with books and pages in the TOC. This happened a couple of times -- and every time it happened, the disappearing files were different. I am not an expert, just a person with sympathy and the same sort of problem.

Helen

[GOGOJO]

Thanks for sharing your experience!  How have you worked around this??  Our project finally just opened and yes, lots of folders are missing.  We are back to the beginning.  And by the way, the cpd file was HUGE when I renamed it.  Did you follow any standard for renaming the file??  I wonder if this will help it to not lose files.  Have you ever talked to someone from Adobe about this issue??

Appreciate your feedback.

[Guest]

Jaws,

Well, I had to rebuild the files from the project manager window. The actual .html pages were still sitting in their respective folders on the C drive, so it was a lengthy project to rebuild, but I'm so familiar with these project files that I knew exactly where to put things. Unfortunately, the .cpd file is growing again! I'm glad to know someone else is facing the same issue.

I am in process of a monthly redeploy of files to all users, but will address the larger issue when this is done.

Helen

[Peter Grainge]

Yesterday one of my guys had a project that kept crashing so he contacted me to find out what to do. I started with the usual advice of renaming the CPD but he phoned me back shortly afterwards to report the project had opened but lots of reports that folders and files were being reported as missing. Inevitably there were scores of broken links reported too. The dialog indicated that RoboHelp would recreate the folders but the files would be missing. No worries I thought, just reimport them, an hour or two and we would be back on the road. Then he phoned me again to advise that he could not reimport them as they were not in the folders when viewed in Windows Explorer. Now that is a first, I have only known RoboHelp really delete the content in one other scenario and this was not it.

At this point he sent me the project and I was able to repeat the problem so we knew it was not the installation. I then tried another method of opening the project as described on my site, renaming the CPD and then opening the project using the HHP file. This time no missing folders and files, so no missing links, and the project can now be opened via the XPJ file.

Of course the CBTs are all missing and so are the layouts. However, as per the Opening Projects article on my site, they are easily recreated. Today we need to investigate what other damage may have been done; I am thinking about Snippets and suchlike.

You guys might like to try that method but be aware of the downside.

A lesson here. It seems the project had been crashing from time to time for a while and that was ignored. Also the cursor was unstable, it flickered from an arrow to the XP hourglass or the Vista beachball. Don't ignore either. With projects like this it might be worth trying the RoboHelp 8 option of letting RoboHelp rebuild the CPD every time you open the project. I suggest though that you have good backups first and if it causes problems, then open another project or create a new project when you open RoboHelp, then turn that option off and then reopen your main project.

Hope that helps. Please both update this thread with anything you find.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[GOGOJO]

Peter - I appreciate your info and will try all routes.  However, can you tell me what format to follow when renaming the cpd??  ***.cpd.OLD ?? then, OLD1, OLD2, etc?  It seems the program has already 6 out there that must have been self-generated.  Do I follow in numerical order or does it even matter?  It seems your article on Opening Projects made me think that rather than deleting the cpd (as indicated in other papers) that renaming it would keep important information that would be used - however, I don't understand how the program will find the renamed cpd file with all that information.  ??  Sorry, this is clear as mud.

Overall, I am wondering if we should revert back to RH7, however, I don't think we can at this point.  We have some huge projects and they need to be functioning and updated on a daily basis for our users.

Also - after we renamed the cpd file, then tried opening the project using the HHP, it just sat there - never opened (well, that's not true, we lost patience waiting).  We were forced to open RH8, then located the HHP file and try that way.  Seems we were just going in circles.  Maybe we need to be more patient and see it through -

Thanks for all the advice and information!

Jo Ann

[Peter Grainge]

The reason I suggest renaming is simply in case the new file makes matters worse and you want to backtrack straight away. If the new CPD is OK, then you can trash the old CPD.

If you double click the HHP, you should see things start to happen. First you will be told there is an XPJ to which you say you don't want to use it.

Exactly how far do you get, how much time do you allow and how big is the whole project?

Once you have opened the project in RH8, you cannot use it in RH7, You would have to go back to your last RH7 project. I haven't tried importing single topics from 8 to 7.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[GOGOJO]

Okay.... let me explain what we just went through and see if anyone has any ideas.....

1- renamed CPD, then went to dbl-clk on HHP file.  It would bring up an activation screen for RoboPublisher(??).  Yes, we were confused, too.  This happened yesterday and I brushed it off, but today I moved the popup screen over and saw that clicking on the HHP file was trying to bring up RoboInfo5.  I didn't realize that this was still on the computer.

2- through Add/Remove Programs, I uninstalled version 5 from that pc. (7 is still on there) We are working now in 8.

3- dbl-clk on the HHP file.  Now it says - What program are you trying to open this with??  It points us to 7, which we don't want to use.  However, version 8 is installed on the D:// drive and not in C://Program files.  Is this causing a problem??  I cannot get the HHP to open in RH8.

Please send ideas before we proceed!!

Thank you

[Peter Grainge]

If you right click the HHP, you should have an option to Open With. From there you browse to RH8.

I think we have seen problems before with D drive installations but let's see what happens first.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[GOGOJO]

Right clicking on the HHP file gives OPEN or OPEN WITH and we get a dialogue box that says Windows cannot open this file......What do you want to do?  Use the web service...  // or Select the program from a list.

From there I go to d:// and find the Robohtml.exe file and click on it but nothing happens.  It defaults to RH7 and opens that up with the message about using the XPJ file.  At that point I just hit cancel, rather than bringing up the project in 7.

I think this is what you had mentioned would happen, but it's happening with 7 and not 8. I was on the phone with an Adobe person today and they mentioned that we should leave the previous version of Robo on the pc, although this seems to be causing problems....

????

[Peter Grainge]

Open With allows you to browse anywhere. You could point it to winword.exe if you so chose, although obviously it would not work. Are you browsing to the the robohtml.exe within RoboHelp 8's folders?

Did you buy an upgrade to 8 or a full licence? If you only purchased an upgrade, then no matter what you have been told, you cannot have both installed. You must uninstall both and then just install 8. It will prompt you for both licence numbers at different points but it will install without 7 being on the PC.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[GOGOJO]

(I was out of the office yesterday...)

I will explain what we did to deal with this situation.

'Open With' would never allow us to point to the .exe file and open RH8, it just wouldn't acknowledge it.  (sounds strange, and it was)

Our PC Support person came and began working with regedit to 'fake' out the system.

Remember, RH7 was still installed on the pc.  He tried uninstalling RH7 to get it out of the way - and it seemed to work on about the 4th try.  It was a recurring nightmare and wouldn't delete off the pc. (we had tried unistalling the day before and it looked like it worked, but the program was still there.  Plus, after speaking with an Adobe person, they thought we should leave any previous version on - ??)

Our probem was, the .HHP file would not open in RH8, but would default to RH7.  We didn't want to have the project be opened in an older version.  We were just trying to follow the steps of RENAMING THE CPD, OPEN the project using HHP file, then closing it and OPEN it correctly with the XPJ.  This was all we were trying to accomplish.

Another issue with our pc, was that the C:/ drive had been full at the time of the upgrade to RH8, so we installed it on the D:/ drive.  We decided after successfully uninstalling RH7, to move some things around.  I think this is what solved our issue.  We made room on C:/ and reinstalled RH8 onto the C:/ drive.

And thankfully - it finally opened the project with the HHP file.  Then opened again with the XPJ - with NO MISSING FOLDERS or TOC .... Yeah!!

Lesson:

1-Clean off OLD versions of RH before installing the newest version (we had 5 and 7 on this system)

2-Do not installl to any location other than C:/

3-Be patient - for whatever reason 7 would not uninstall - eventually, it did.  A little registry clean up may have helped.

Thanks for all the help!!

[Peter Grainge]

Jaws

I discovered the Open With problem myself tonight. Most odd and I cannot explain it. RH8 is the default on the machine concerned. However, opening RH8 and browsing to the HHP worked fine.

Another solution is to locate your Send To folder and add shortcuts to both versions of RH.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[GOGOJO]

The nightmare continues..

The one project seems to be fine.  However, that PC is getting the "curse of the cursor" problem (arrow to hourglass at a rapid pace).  and now problems are happening with other projects (missing files, etc).

Seems others are experiencing this - so we will move on from this topic to start or continue with another.

Thanks all-

[Peter Grainge]

When you come back to this, see Opening Projects on my site.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge