RW 7 suddenly blank!

Classic
1

RW 7 project suddenly CTD, then nothing visible in the reopened project! Not ANYWHERE. Both preview AND edit mode are blank. I can see my page attributes are in the inspector but there is Nothing in the workspace except the top menu.The project has worked fine for 3 years. PLEASE HELP.

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Did you try a new project?

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i’m not sure what CTD stands for (“Crash to Desktop?” maybe – but that doesn’t make sense if you can open the file and see it’s blank – so maybe you can enlighten me as to this acronym?)

but… a totally blank file with no error messages and no other details is a grim sign that the file has suffered some sort of serious corruption. perhaps a disk error, perhaps a program bug, perhaps something else more insidious. the most common causes of file corruption I see are from services like DropBox causing file syncing issues – but that is far from the only cause.

by far the best option in this situation would be to restore from a recent backup. this, of course, assumes that you have a recent backup – since the file is years old i’m optimistic this is the case.

there is also the backup feature of RW itself. if you have enabled this there may be a recent copy of your project that is retrievable from your server. you’ll need to contact RW support to help you find and recover it.

if not, then the prognosis gets quite a bit more nebulous. i’d recommend posting a share to your zip (or sending it to RW or YourHead customer support). in very rare instances a corrupted page can be cut out from a project and the rest of the project can be salvaged. however i do want to set your expectations at a realistic level – the far more likely occurrence is that the file content is missing entirely or so mangled that it’s unsalvageable.

if there really is no backup. and i really do hope this is not the case, but if it is… and the file is indeed corrupted, then i’ll just give a pat on the back and my condolences. as a long time computer user i’ve suffered my share of data loss. it’s not fun. i know how angry that makes me feel. hopefully you, and other users that are reading this and living without a backup, that it’s time to switch on Time Machine and enable that RW backup feature in the publishing setting.

Isaiah

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I did and everything is blank. Old projects or new. All that loads is the top menu bar.

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Thank you for the good reply. Its a problem with RW itself because it simply does not load anything old or new except for the top menu bar. I cannot begin a new project. Very strange. It happened when I was switching between preview and edit. It crashed to the desktop and closed. (CTD). When I reopened the app it was blank and continues to be.

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@molinaart – well, perhaps that’s encouraging news? if everything is blank – then maybe the file is OK – and it’s just something has gone horribly wrong with the app.

i’d recommend:

  1. remove all addons from the addons folder (temporarily).
    if this seems to help, then perhaps it’s just a plugin or theme that is causing the problems. just add them back one at a time until you discover the culprit. when you do, try downloading a new copy of that addon.

  2. if it’s not addons, then i’d recommend looking at your RW copy. make sure there is only one copy installed. you can also delete it and reinstall a fresh copy from the RapidWeaver website or Mac App Store (or where ever you bought RW).

  3. if, after that it’s still crashing – i’d recommend talking with Realmac Software. they’ll show you how to send them the crash reports which might help diagnose the situation further.

Isaiah

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Great idea! I had just installed the Ecwid store and was working on that when the crash happened. I have numerous versions of RW installed as well. The other ones work fine and I am sure that the problem is with RW and maybe the ecwid store. Even though I don’t see anything, the files are still there invisible, because all the properties of the files show up in the inspector.
I will keep you posted.

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HOORAY!! I recovered my website after days of trail and error!!!
Thanks to Isaiah and Realmac for making suggestions. This is what I did >>>

  1. I completely uninstalled RW by reading the instructions on support.
  2. I got a new reinstall code and redownloaded RW7 again.
  3. I booted it up and reinstalled stacks.
  4. After checking that it was working correctly, I dragged my RW7 website project out from the Trash and restarted it in the new RW7.
    Amazingly, the custom theme was there and all my plugins. It all seems to work well now.
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