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ClareLondon · Obsessive GoldMiner

Hi (Dave, probably!)

Somethings gone and got itself broke over here in England and it ain't just the government.

I've got a situation where everytime I tried to load GoldBox, it came up with an error where it said it was 'currently in use by another user'. But there was no other user on my system.

I tried rebooting and reloading GoldBox, but got the same error.

Previous circumstances - nothing I know of. No system crash, nothing tha I noticed. My last activity on GoldBox was as normal, last night, building groups.

Steps Taken

I've copied over to a safe place the backup director and also manually copied the DBFs, DBTs and MDXs to a safe place. I've also got a complete backup of the root directory in a safe place.

I tried copying the latest update again onto the root but it did nothing -same error.

Tried copying the entire backup directory over the top - wouldn't let me.

Then, with all the backups safe I thought I'd just delete the whole directory and reinstall.
Except I can't. There's a DLL file, CTL3D32 which the system refuses to let me delete. It says it is 'in use by another user'.

Basically at the moment I'm just trying to get the current Goldbox off the system and put a clean one in its place, but I'm not able to do this. This CTL3D32.dll file is controlling everything. I've tried deleting it manually and I tried renaming it. It let me rename it but it wouldn't let me delete it, even when it was called frog and even when I deleted the dll extension.

I checked in Taskbar / Processes to see if such afile was running, but can't see any sign of it.

I've rebooted, with nothing else running, but I'm still stuck.

Am wondering what next...

Rolling Eyes

BobTaylor · GoldBox Guru

No idea what caused this, or why that DLL wasn't released when you rebooted. Just for grins, open Task Manager and look for PLUSRUN.EXE. If it exists, terminate it.

If it didn't show up, I'd begin to suspect some sort of viral attack, or similar issue. That would not be a GoldBox issue, but do whatever fixing you can along that line.

Finally, I'd start looking at trying to uninstall and reinstall, I guess.

ClareLondon · Obsessive GoldMiner

Hi Bob

Thanks for your ideas.

Re Task Manager, it was one of the first things I did. Ever time I rebootied I checked it as well. There was never a PLUSRUN.exe. I checked meticulously through all the processes.

Re viral attack, mm. Dunno. Everything else was/is functioning normally.

Finally, I'd start looking at trying to uninstall and reinstall, I guess.

Yes, I think so too. However, fortunately, GOOD NEWS! I've just tried to delete that directory again and this time it worked. The DLL is gone. I deleted the whole directory. And have just copied back a backup. And everything is normal again.
A very strange one indeed, esp when that DLL got stuck.

But now all is well. Thanks so much for replying and trying to help.

(Actually, I haven't done a system reinstall for a year. It's well overdue. It could cure quite a few jiggily things to do a reformat and rebuild. So that was a remark worth making)

Thanks again Bob.

BobTaylor · GoldBox Guru

Only thing I can add is that if you did a warm boot earlier, a cold one might have worked. Files do get stuck open for reasons I don't understand; a reboot should fix that problem.

ClareLondon · Obsessive GoldMiner

Bob, that was a good thing to say about the cold boot. Should have thought of that.

However. I'm still rather stuck here.

Basically, I'd love to know the correct procedure for restoring the database.

Tried so far:-

1. deleted entire directory

2. copied over most recent copy of the whole directory (sadly, because GB has never broken before, one from 7 days old...)

3. Ran prog - everything hunky dory.

TRIED TO RESTORE MOST RECENT DATA
4. tried copying the files from the most recent GBX backup (which I did yesterday). But then it threw up a message saying the files were not indexed. So I tried the pack/index feature but it would not respond.

5. I deleted the whole directory again and put back the whole directory copy. This time I copied in a backup I took today of the DBF, DBT and MDX files. I copied them over the 7 day old install and opened up.

Everything is still working but my saved setups are blank. OUCH! All my painfully lput together groups are gorn.

Is there a better way of doing this?

And - question: the GBX backup that GoldBox invites you to do.... I can't see anywhere any instructions for using it to restore. Howja do it then?

Thanks for any ideas

Clare