Known Participant

Question

Captivate 5.5 Reanimated RoboDemo and Destroyed All Files

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
September 1, 2011
3 replies
3444 views

Installed Capt. 5.5. Working along. All's going OK. Looking for a resource and suddenly ALL my project files and folders containing 6 earlier captivate projects are GONE!! from the directory. Investigation with help of IT person shows that ALL the files associated with Captivate projects that weren't actively open at the time were compressed and stuffed into some freakish archive with RoboDemo extensions. Thank God I'm a compulsive file copier. Had yesterday's stuff on the main server and did a system restore but I still have to re-create a whole day of work because there's no way to resurrect those compressed buggers that I can find. No warning. No messages. No nothing. Just WOOSH! Gone. In the background while I was minding my own business.

This topic has been closed for replies.

N

nadalyn

Participating Frequently

The same thing happened to me. Only I was using Captivate 5.0. My files cptx file disappeared and when (the next day), I looked for files on my network saved about the same date and time that I saved my missing cptx, there were files in a directory called: C:\Documents and Settings\nad\My Documents\Adobe Captivate Cached Projects\CPD01ce105539ec41a6a6112da11ca7bbfb\db\compressed_data.

Is there any way to rebuild these into my missing cptx?

D

DevarySSAuthor

Known Participant

VERY HELPFUL of you to post. Sadly I haven't found any way to re-establish those files. I only see this when I am saving up to Captivate 5.5 from a 5.0 file opened in the new version. Curious that you experienced it in Capt 5.

D

DevarySSAuthor

Known Participant

UPDATE: Able to recreate this result consistently. On opening files created in Captivate 5.0 using Captivate 5.5, on my PC with my configuration, (Windows XP) Captivate created a folder, compressed any and all files associated with the paths in the Captivate file being opened, and compressed them into non-openable files in a structure that looks like this:

It deleted all files in the original folder associated with the 5.0 initial file that weren't actually open at the time.

I will post this to Bugs and strongly recommend that you make back up files of any captivate 5 projects and store them on media away from any drives that are running Captivate 5.5, rather than just assume you can open 5.0 files in 5.5 and continue working normally.

Captiv8r

Legend

Hello again and thanks for reporting this.

I'm curious about something here. The folder structure you show lists "ElearningWorkplace". What is this? I also note that there are other odd looking folder names here. Wondering if this is playing a role in things.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links

Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form

Adobe Certified Captivate Training

SorcerStone Blog

Captivate eBooks

D

DevarySSAuthor

Known Participant

ElearningWorkplace is simply the folder on my C: where I store and work on project folders. EN is a subfolder representing ENGLISH, which is the only language I create in. The strangely named folders are the ones created in the phenomenon I described. My own folders for the projects are called SPA01, SPA02 and so on because the modules I have been creating are for Spectrum Analyzer and are Module 01, 02, etc.

I create captivate projects from a design template and save them to the ElearningWorkplace folders under the EN subfolder. The multi-character folders you see are the NEW files created each time I open a 5.0 project in 5.5 and save it up. My original folders and files disappear when these weirdly named folders appear. All that remains of my original file structure each time, is just the folder and specific file I had open when I was doing the resave. All art and media are deleted along with any serial captivate files that were part of aggragator files in earlier version.

*every date that I opened Capt 5.5 has a corresponding set of rubbish folders and the day I didn't open it, there are no rubbish folders.

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi there

Where exactly do you store your files? Local C drive or on a server?

If you say "on a server" that is a problem. You really need to only work on your files while they are on your local media. Then make backup copies to the server.

Personally, I've never known Captivate to do anything remotely like this. So my belief is that you will find it's a red herring.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links

Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form

Adobe Certified Captivate Training

SorcerStone Blog

Captivate eBooks

D

DevarySSAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

I store all files in the local drive and copy the whole file strucuture, backing everything up to the main server at the end of the work day because I am compulsive about having multiple copies in different places (thank heaven). This was completely outside the parameters of any "normal" activity and had no warnings or other indicators except the suddenly missing files. Hundreds of files.

Well of course you haven't known Captivate to do this. I'm sure you, or anyone else who saw this would post it. The fact that the extension on all the compressed files in the archive is a robodemo extension points to Captivate. Nothing else on my system has any relationship to robo demo and I've never had Robo Demo, nor any version of Captivate older than 4, on this station. Additionally, the ONLY files to be affected were those associated with Captivate projects, as in anything that was part of a project library. Red herring, wildly improbably single instance, whatever you wanna call it, the fingerprints DO point to Captivate in my estimation.

Captiv8r

Legend

Hello again

Please note that I'm not really trying to argue here, only trying to understand what may have happened.

You said the files were compressed and placed into a "RoboDemo" file extension. Can you please expound on exactly what the extension was or is?

I totally get that it's an unusual situation and that from all appearances at this point you are believing the finger is pointing to Captivate. But let's face it. What you are really looking at is nothing more than file extensions at this point. And from the operating system's point of view, an extension is an extension. There are a multitude of different extensions out there and many overlap. So what appears to be a RoboDemo extension may well apply to other applications as well.

My thoughts are that if this is something honestly related to Captivate, we would have seen other reports of the behavior. But we haven't. Yours is the sole report. So until we begin seeing other reports from other users stating the same thing, we have to conclude that it's a unique situation with your PC setup.

Part of what I might hope to achieve would be determining what caused it and how to prevent it from occurring on other PCs.

Have you tried reporting any of this to Adobe? And just in case you are thinking "isn't this what I've just done by posting here in the forums?" the answer would be no. Adobe has an official channel they are keenly tuned into. That channel is called the Wish Form. (link is in my sig)