Session not loading any more

George Master

hi,
I had a few tabs open for quite a long time, may be some of them got bigger time by time.
I always felt secure about my files and I have daily access whenever I wake up my machine from sleeping.

Today all my tabs are gone.
When I try to load the files from backup, it says:

Session file is either corrupted or invalid

(or alike, translating from German)
In settings, session extension is no entry.

Plse how to get them back?
or is it just the update it was asking for?
I need to open them urgently

I was missing to save sessions, my fault…

Thanks

Terry R

@George-Master

About the only help I can give is to suggest to read the post in our FAQ section here.

You may be able to recover some (or all) the files depending on what backup settings you had.

Unfortunately you have fallen into the same situation as lots of people, trusting that Notepad++ will look after your files without actually taking the time to check the backup settings and adjust to your preferred ideas on how it should work.

Terry

George Master

thanks a lot Terry,

I´ve read the topic in the FAQ that explains the save/autosave functions, but cannot find the point why files suddenly appear as corrupted and how to restore them.

I hope to find more facts about what happened…
I cannot believe the files got completely destroyed after all was good for years…
Do you think it is worth trying to open them with another text editor?

regards

Terry R

@George-Master said in Session not loading any more:

I cannot believe the files got completely destroyed after all was good for years…
Do you think it is worth trying to open them with another text editor?

As the error message you got referred to the session file, the files that were loaded may not be corrupt. The session file is an XML file used by Notepad++ to store information about the files loaded in a session. So what Notepad++ does is first read the session file, then opens the files referenced within it.

So I’d suggest following the information within the post I linked to, looking within the %appdata%\Notepad++\backup folder. You may get lucky and find the actual files still there intact and hopefully with recent data in them. This was all mentioned in the section titled Scenario: My (unsaved) files are missing!.

Terry

George Master

Thanks again…

I restored all by copies opened in Win Editor… then opened them in Notepad+++ - they are back again…

No, the files themselves could not be opened separately (error message), while the session file seemed not to have valid information any more -

It got overwritten when I opened some other files and closed them all.
After that I closed Notepad++
So if the files were corrupted, the session was probably not (but didn´t have a look in preview)

I understood that I need to save the session - but not how all corresponding files got corrupted -
A good lesson to learn…

I assume, it will automatically refer to session.xml , while the manually saved session will go as a emergency backup as long as I save it from time to time.

I got used to finding all changes made save in place even after closing Notepad++ without saving, which is so relaxed.

Still, its hard to get all the info checked in the FAQ, because my English is not the best…

thanks again

Terry R

@George-Master
I’m glad you have been able to restore all the files. Of course you have also learnt a valuable lesson. Understand what the application is doing with your files, this holds true for every application you use.

Never take anything for granted as that’s when you will suffer, always be aware of where your files are. The more critical the data within a file, the more you need to check that you have the necessary backups of it.

No computer or application is completely fail safe. You are one of the fortunate few who has recovered from this “backup” mishap, most lose it all.

Terry

George Master

@Terry-R

yes, I´m lucky…

just confused as the message said “session file invalid” while the files from backup folder themselves wouldn´t open as well…

but now I could open one of these files which leaves me wondering…

Do you mean that to avoid further issues, do I have to save manually all files every day?
Every hour?
I still want to trust the auto update like before

Files in backup update every 7 seconds, may be that’s too often, so it could happen that I set my PC to sleep right at the moment Notepad++ is updating, causing such an error?

May be it’s not intended to let Notepad++ stay open while going to sleep mode.
But that´s what I used to do all the time.

kr

Terry R

@George-Master said in Session not loading any more:

May be it’s not intended to let Notepad++ stay open while going to sleep mode.
But that´s what I used to do all the time.

I personally would NOT do that. Anytime you leave the PC for an extended period of time unattended (especially in sleep mode) with any applications open you are leaving yourself wide open for issues to arise.

I’m confused by your conflicting statements of first not being to open the backup files, now you can. Since you can open now, the first attempt must have had unknown issues.

The error message referred to the session.xml file and that’s what I thought was corrupt, not your actual backup files. That seems to be confirmed by your latest attempt to open the backup files.

As for you saving files, only you can answer that question. If you cannot afford to lose data you need to maintain control over when and where the backups reside.

Again, I can only refer you back to that FAQ post, there is lots of great information there about what to consider about the backup regime you use. But, and I can’t stress this enough, don’t go forward without at least setting the backup preferences to something you are happy with. Either change the Notepad++ settings or go for the plugin referred to in that FAQ post if wanting further guarantees.

Terry