Aarrgghh! A crash!

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"My computer crashed. What now?"

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The computer crashing is about the worst thing that can happen to Athenaeum (or any database program).

You should do all you can to prevent the computer crashing (this is described in detail in the Athenaeum Reference Manual); keep regular backups (also described in the Athenaeum Reference Manual) and learn the simple process of recovering the Athenaeum files.

Preventing the computer crashing

use a computer with a "clean" system. No system modifiers such as screen savers, speed doublers or ram doublers (especially the ram doubling programs) should be installed. These modify the system in a non-standard way which are not supported by Apple (for the MacOS) or Microsoft (for Windows95 or WindowsNT).

Regular backups

Use a Zip Drive. These are very low cost, very fast and very easy. You should have one backup for every day of the week. At the end of the day, quit Athenaeum on all computers, copy the Athenaeum folder onto the backup device and go home. It will probably take you around 3 minutes. What a great investment of time!

Restoring your backup. With a device such as a Zip drive, it is a simple process to copy the last backup to the computer. Create a new folder on your computer and name it "Crashed files" and copy the crashed copy of Athenaeum into it. Insert your backup and copy the backed up files into the original folder. You might check the log file (see below).

Recovering files

Athenaeum has a recover feature built-in. To recover Athenaeum, simply do the following:-

a) Launch Athenaeum and hold down the command & option keys (on the Mac) or control and shift keys (on Windows) until you are presented with a dialog box asking which files you need to recover (Figure 1).

b) double-click on the first file in the Athenaeum folder (Borrowr_.SWC). Athenaeum will now rename the crashed file "Borrower_ old.swc" and recover the new file to the original name.

c) repeat step b) for every file. The current list of files (as at the time of writing) are:- Borrowr_.SWC, Catalog_.SWC, Catarc_.SWC, circArc_.SWC, Circuln_.SWC, Fines_.SWC, help_.SWC, Loandef_.SWC, log_.SWC, Reserve_.SWC, Review_.SWC, SumWare.SWC, supplr_.SWC.

Investigating the log

Athenaeum maintains a log of transactions (call it an insurance policy). If you successfully open the crashed copy of Athenaeum, open the file "Log_.FP3".

You will find it under the Window menu. The log file is a listing of all of the issues, issue denials & returns over time. Speak with your support consultant to find out how you can filter the listing and see all of the transactions that occured since your last backup.

Note: In Athenaeum 2.5, the log can be turned OFF, to increase speed (this is important if you have very slow computers or a slow network). If you do turn off the log, you can't check the last transactions. We suggest that you back up Athenaeum at least twice per day.