4 replies to this topic

[Dave in New Brunswick]

RootsMagic Backup is more essential than you would believe.  I thought I was, with daily copies to my wife's desktop, a copy to my travel laptop and weekly copies to an external HD.

When you backup, it's essential you include the date, and yes this will lead to a lot of backups.  I tell you this because I had purged a lot of older backups prior to 25 Oct 2017.  In Jan 2018  I clicked on a location in the "Place List" only to have RM FREEZE.  Actually two locations in the place list were causing RM to freeze.  The Backups back to 25 Oct 2017 were all faulty.  Soon thereafter 24 Jan 2018 I contacted RM Support, and over the next few weeks, they confirmed the problem with a copy of my data that was uploaded; but offered no solution to how to correct things.  The problem was also brought up at the weekly tech support meeting, but nothing came from that to aid me.

On my own, I tried to export a Gedcom, then open it, but the fault is carried by the Gedcom.  I then went into every individual's edit screen who had a Bad Place Location and changed each one to a new format of that location and those would open in the Place List at first, but later froze up, and now my Unused Places freeze's RM.  An awful lot of work, with little gain.  On an old external HD, I did find a good backup from 25 Oct 2016, One year prior to the backups on my computer, but 15 months older than where I would like to be working.  My missing headcount is up over 2000 people, let alone all of the changes and additions to the other 18000 people.

I again tried to jog something out of Tech Support, who suggested I use the Compare Files Tool. I've tried but it is a nightmare; only copies one person over at a time and does not link them into their family.

The most recent problem that I found, is that in the older file of 25 Oct 2016, one of the problem locations is opening in 6 to 7 seconds, where others open in less than one second.

I found an older backup of 31 May 2015 with less than 17000 people, and the problematic place took 6 seconds to open, so the problem I am experiencing goes back years.

 

[TomH]

Dave, I have had a few successes resolving problems that may be similar. If you can make your backup sans media accessible to me, I will give it a shot. No promise of success.

[Dave in New Brunswick]

Sorry TomH, seen your note, but then things at home caused need to drop this problem for a while.  When I got back to it, I'd forgot your offer... I'm 75?

Problem seems solved: RM for some reason multiplies any notes attached to any place location. In my 15 month old backup, my original place location note of 4.3 pages (MS Word) had become 124 pages, having been multiplied 22 times. When I clicked on the problematic location in the Place List, it would take up to 10 seconds to open; when the note was reduced to it's original 4.3 pages, it opened immediately.

The problem identified, I went back to a recent Back-Up, restored it, made a new Place Name, then had to manually change more than 3500 individual facts from the Problematic Name to the New Place Name, so that each fact was divorced from the problem. (Note that at one point I had tried to use "Search & Replace", but that carried the problem.) With every fact changed to a good place location, I tried to copy everyone to a new file, but RM gedcomed the move and the problem place was also moved to the new file, but I did find how to easily move everybody to the new file.

I'm quite disappointed with RM.  All these years I had been using the Database Tools, specifically Test Database Integrity which one would think would catch this flaw, but all it does is leave one with a false sense of "Guess everything is OK"

Again, Thanks for your offer to help.

[TomH]

Dave, I am a little confused as to whether your problem has been cleared. Second para says "solved" but you then go on describing things that you did but the problem persisted. 

 

Yes, "check database integrity" tests that the database structure is intact and that its table indexes are not mispointing. It does not test for screwy data. Sounds like that particular place had/caused a problem for a very long time. With it identified, SQLite could be used to replace the 3500 uses of it by another in a few seconds. Or used to inspect your data for the cause and come up with a query that would identify other such instances.

[Dave in New Brunswick]

Problem is solved.  All personal facts related to the problem location, were changed to a new location, that completed the whole list of people had to be moved to a new file, leaving the now unused faulty location behind; this caused a minor problem, as Drag & Drop Everyone took the problem to the new file. I overcame this. The new file is clear of the problem.