All Fund Manager Data Lost

[Septaj]

Warning to everyone: Several days ago I started FM as usual and ALL data was gone. Missing. No more. All .dat files, all .mm4 files. Everything ... gone.

A file recovery program did not find any traces of the files. Incredible. Many years of work has disappeared.

Although I do have an old back-up, this is quite disturbing. (I've been through several hard drive crashes in the good old days of computers so I no longer get the stomach-burning-I'm-gonna-kill-myself feeling.)

Possible causes: either a disk cleaning program (I use CCleaner) got overly excited, or a Windows Update (I use XP and had just done an update) lost control and went mad.

I also use Revo Uninstaller and it is conceivable that it had gotten carried away (although I hadn't used it recently and think the damage has been done since its last use.)

Another possibility is that there was a malfunction in Fund Manager itself. FWIW, I have been unable to update to the latest version for some time for a reason Mark has offered an explanation for but which I have not been able to get around to solving.

Anyway, I am posting this as a warning and in case others have had this or there is an epidemic. I would like to hear of anyone else' similar experience.

[Mark]

Hi Septaj,

Sorry to hear about this. Fund Manager is not capable of deleting data files. It can only "close" data files so they aren't open in the program, but it does not have the capability of deleting data files off your hard drive. Here are a couple ideas:

1) How are you determining all the files are gone? Is it just because they didn't open up automatically when you started Fund Manager? If so, maybe the data files are still on your hard drive. Do you know what folder you were storing your data files in? If you browse to that folder on your computer are your files all gone?

2) If your data files are really gone for some reason, how about your automatic backup files? Fund Manager creates automatic backups whenever you exit. See "Options / General Preferences... / Data" for the location and frequency of your automatic backups. If you go look in this folder, do you have any *.FMB backup files? If so, you can use the latest one to restore all your data files.

[Septaj]

Nope, all the files are gone. All Fund Manager-related .dat files (though there are a few .dat files for other programs, which seems to lessen the likelihood of CCleaner being the culprit), all .mm4 files, and, indeed, all .fmb files.

The auto backup location was: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Fund Manager\Backups. The entire Documents folder is now missing. I've been using Fund Manager w/o significant problems for 10 years! Yet it seems I had placed my backup location in the same folder as my data, itself in a questionable location. If this was indeed the case, it had something to do with the problems encountered in moving FM from another computer (that used Vista vs. the current XP). I think I had intended to remedy this but then forgot about it.

It's just unbelievable. I've waited a few days to let this sink in and in the hope of some oversight on my part. No change: they're gone. (And, as mentioned, even a file recovery program can find no identifiable trace of them).

I'm leaning toward a Windows Update malfunction, as unlikely as this sounds. Only slightly less likely: I was sleep-computing. Or, perhaps most likely, I just manually deleted the Documents folder in a major brainfart.

FWIW, C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Fund Manager still exists. All that is in there are two .tts files

I'm gonna check Revo Uninstaller to see if it logs files it has removed. This is truly grasping at straws. In any event, my files are gone. I'm doing this on behalf of other users.

[Mark]

Hi Septaj,

That does sound quite strange. Have you scanned your whole hard drive while logged in as an administrator for *.FMB? Do you mean this folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents

is completely gone?

One thing that seems odd is the backup location is set to the "All Users" path. Are you running Windows XP? This is an XP type path, not a Vista/Windows 7 path. Normally, this is set to a specific user, the user you are logged into the computer as. If you go look under:

C:\Documents and Settings

Do you have other folders, besides "All Users"? Maybe you have logged into Windows as a different user?

[Septaj]

Hi Mark, any others following this drama ...

First off, thanks for your interest Mark. I do think I answered your questions in previous posts!

I am not blaming Fund Manager for this debacle. I must have caused the folder to be deleted in some other way.

Lessons learned:

1) Fix any difficulties running Fund Manager immediately when you become aware of them.

2) Backup to a proper, separate location, and do it frequently.

So, I discovered perfect, functional, Fund Manager data (.dat and .mm4 files) in a Windows Backup I did (with Vista) several months ago on another computer. I was able to extract these files on my current computer (XP) and, with some directory work, have FM load them. (Sometimes you just have to love Windows.)

I am faced with re-acquiring the data of the last few months - a nightmare given that, in Canada we are third-world and brokers do not offer OFX accounts. But that's another story.

A sad, sad story of living in backward, loserland Canada.

Anyway. This has not been a complete disaster. Almost-full recovery is imminent.

[vgylys]

Might be, this post would lead FundManager team to make cloud based version of FundManager. This would be much more secure, then keeping 10 years data on the local drive.

[tokyo_trader]

Hi,

Why don't you use a free "Dropbox' cloud storage account. http://www.dropbox.com

I think the free account gives you 4GB of secure online storage. Which is more than you'll need
Also, if you use the link I provided above, you'll also get an additional 500mb storage for free.

It will also sync and backup your data automatically.

The result is that you will have a version of your FM data stored on your local machine, and a mirror backed up version online.

Hope this helps?

Tokyo_Trader