Possible to repair database corruption?

Shortly after upgrading to 2018.3, my database became corrupted.  Unfortunately, by the time we noticed, we had recorded several thousand transactions.  It seems to only affect the "Maintenance" menu and the "Payroll Cheque Run", which leads me to believe the corruption pertains to the payroll module (there are payroll related menu items under the maintenance menu).  I can confirm that it's the data itself, because the error occurs on another computer / different user accessing the same client data, and other files (including the sample data) work fine.

My debugger shows that it's an "Access violation - code c0000005".

The error messages look like this.  When I click on the "Maintenance" menu, I see this error and the menu doesn't show (meaning I have until Dec 31st to solve this).

When I click on "Payroll cheque run", I see this:


And lastly, I can view what would be the window for the Payroll cheque run, but using the trick as if the window were outside of the screen area.  By pressing Alt-Spacebar, and clicking maximize, I can see the window which is mostly blank.


Any suggestions?

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  • 0
    Shortly after upgrading to 2018.3, my database became corrupted.

    Did this happen the very first time this screen was opened, after conversion?

    If you restore an older copy as a test, does the same issue occur?

    Have you contacted Sage Software for support, with more information?  They may have some insight into the issue, and depending on whether this was reported through Microsoft as a crash, they may know how to correct the problem.

    I ask, because a few years ago I reported a crashing bug to Sage (that was corrected) that showed up when selecting a particular (long) customer's name.  Since I could reproduce the issue in the sample company it was almost certainly a 'buffer over-run'.

    It seems to only affect the "Maintenance" menu and the "Payroll Cheque Run", which leads me to believe the corruption pertains to the payroll module (there are payroll related menu items under the maintenance menu).

    Probably not the transaction data, Window position and other data are stored within each Company File. 

    Possibly using the DB Util tool to clear window positions or reset security may help, always back up your data, and work from another workstation or restore the company file with a temporary name so that you're not working on your only copy.

  • 0 in reply to RandyW

    Thanks for the response and the insights.  Unfortunately, I don't know if it happened the first time after conversion.  We only do payroll runs every two weeks, and I rarely have to view the maintenance menu.  The only way I figured out which day it had occurred was by restoring several backups made by my regular backup regime.  I found that June 13th, it was corrupt, and I didn't have to update the file.  June 12th it was not corrupt, but I had to update the file to 2018.3 in order to view it.  Since the June 12th data was fine, even after updating, I don't believe it was the update that caused it.  I suppose something could have gone wrong during the initial upgrade, but there's no way to tell.

    I did contact Sage Software and although they were very helpful, they weren't able to fix it, indicating that I would need to send in my data for "repair" at $250.  Since it only affects the payroll cheque run (this client is only seasonal, with only 25 employees paid bi-weekly during the tourist season), and the maintenance menu (rarely used), I can't justify that cost.  If I can't roll forward next year, I'll just sent up a clean version for 2019 and onwards.

    I agree that it's probably not the transaction data (at least I hope not .. lol).  As part of the troubleshooting with Sage, we did clear the window positions, and reset the security (at last I think that was one of the steps).

    And yes ... always very careful working around the live data.  I've been restoring backups to my desktop to troubleshoot without touching the version on the server.

    Hoping for education purposes and to fix this, that someone out there has run into this before and may provide some guidance.  I'd love to know how to repair data .. you never know. :)

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  • 0 in reply to RandyW

    Thanks for the response and the insights.  Unfortunately, I don't know if it happened the first time after conversion.  We only do payroll runs every two weeks, and I rarely have to view the maintenance menu.  The only way I figured out which day it had occurred was by restoring several backups made by my regular backup regime.  I found that June 13th, it was corrupt, and I didn't have to update the file.  June 12th it was not corrupt, but I had to update the file to 2018.3 in order to view it.  Since the June 12th data was fine, even after updating, I don't believe it was the update that caused it.  I suppose something could have gone wrong during the initial upgrade, but there's no way to tell.

    I did contact Sage Software and although they were very helpful, they weren't able to fix it, indicating that I would need to send in my data for "repair" at $250.  Since it only affects the payroll cheque run (this client is only seasonal, with only 25 employees paid bi-weekly during the tourist season), and the maintenance menu (rarely used), I can't justify that cost.  If I can't roll forward next year, I'll just sent up a clean version for 2019 and onwards.

    I agree that it's probably not the transaction data (at least I hope not .. lol).  As part of the troubleshooting with Sage, we did clear the window positions, and reset the security (at last I think that was one of the steps).

    And yes ... always very careful working around the live data.  I've been restoring backups to my desktop to troubleshoot without touching the version on the server.

    Hoping for education purposes and to fix this, that someone out there has run into this before and may provide some guidance.  I'd love to know how to repair data .. you never know. :)

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