Reverted to defaults
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sightbeagle - Posts: 20
- Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2014 10:57 pm
Reverted to defaults
Sighthound today reverted to defaults for some reason. When I rebooted the computer, I was prompted with the Sighthound login again needing my email and password. All of my video is still on the E: drive, but now under options it's set to store video back on the c: drive. In the "C:\Documents and Settings\David\Local Settings\Application Data\Sighthound Video" the files in this folder have a creation date of today. My rules are still there however. How can I re-point the program so it finds and I can access all of my video on the E: drive? If you know, can you tell me why this happened?
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Semper Vaporo - Posts: 331
- Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:51 am
Re: Reverted to defaults
I have had a similar problem occur with other programs. I wrote an alarm clock program many years ago where I can set repeating alarms to remind me of birthdays and appointments and such. It stores the alarm info in the Windows Registry. Sometimes, (not very often, maybe once every 5 or 6 months) in the morning when I boot-up the PC for the day, an alarm that I deleted the day before will occur again, or alarms that I created the day before no longer exist. It is quite frustrating when I miss an appointment because I was relying on the program to remind me and the alarm disappeared from the list!
Because I have the source code for this program, I have made modifications to try to catch when this occurs... so far I am stymied as to the cause, or cure. I can only surmise that some anti-malware feature is detecting something wrong and overwriting the Registry with a previous copy. I am not sure if it is one of the 3rd party anti-malware program I use or if it is something in Windows 7 (I don't remember it ever happening in previous versions of Windows).
I modified the program to store the info in both the Registry as well as an ".INI" file (an old, but still viable, method for a program to store 'system' info). I have found that whatever is restoring the previous Registry data is also re-writing the ".INI" file, because, when the program starts, it compares data from both and finds no differences, yet sometimes there is a difference in what I remember as to which alarms should exist. It never loses alarms that have been in the list for a long time, nor does it recall alarms that I deleted many days ago, it only reverts to the setup from the day before I made changes to the list.
It is difficult to troubleshoot because I cannot find a way to cause it to happen and it happens so seldom I am not usually prepared to troubleshoot it (such as, "Didn't I delete that alarm?" or "I thought I created a new alarm for that appointment.", I can't remember!). Frustrating!
I think I have seen something similar with other programs... such as if I create or edit a document with "Word" or "Excel", it normally adds that file name to the "Recent File List" for that program, but sometimes I think I have noticed a file not listed in that list that I remember should be there... like the system somehow reverted to a previous copy of the list.
This is sort of a ridiculous thing to suggest, but it is the only thing I can think of that might "cure" the "hey what happened?" conundrum that you describe and I have seen in other programs... I would recommend that after you make a major change to any program's setup, reboot the computer right away and verify that the change is still set they way you want. I think that this might cure the problem because upon a successful reboot, Windows is supposed to take a new snapshot of the Registry and I am thinking that maybe it is during that process that it decides there is something wrong with the present setup and thus copies the last successful copy it made back into the Registry (and any modified ".INI" files). I just don't know what triggers the rewrite.
Because I have the source code for this program, I have made modifications to try to catch when this occurs... so far I am stymied as to the cause, or cure. I can only surmise that some anti-malware feature is detecting something wrong and overwriting the Registry with a previous copy. I am not sure if it is one of the 3rd party anti-malware program I use or if it is something in Windows 7 (I don't remember it ever happening in previous versions of Windows).
I modified the program to store the info in both the Registry as well as an ".INI" file (an old, but still viable, method for a program to store 'system' info). I have found that whatever is restoring the previous Registry data is also re-writing the ".INI" file, because, when the program starts, it compares data from both and finds no differences, yet sometimes there is a difference in what I remember as to which alarms should exist. It never loses alarms that have been in the list for a long time, nor does it recall alarms that I deleted many days ago, it only reverts to the setup from the day before I made changes to the list.
It is difficult to troubleshoot because I cannot find a way to cause it to happen and it happens so seldom I am not usually prepared to troubleshoot it (such as, "Didn't I delete that alarm?" or "I thought I created a new alarm for that appointment.", I can't remember!). Frustrating!
I think I have seen something similar with other programs... such as if I create or edit a document with "Word" or "Excel", it normally adds that file name to the "Recent File List" for that program, but sometimes I think I have noticed a file not listed in that list that I remember should be there... like the system somehow reverted to a previous copy of the list.
This is sort of a ridiculous thing to suggest, but it is the only thing I can think of that might "cure" the "hey what happened?" conundrum that you describe and I have seen in other programs... I would recommend that after you make a major change to any program's setup, reboot the computer right away and verify that the change is still set they way you want. I think that this might cure the problem because upon a successful reboot, Windows is supposed to take a new snapshot of the Registry and I am thinking that maybe it is during that process that it decides there is something wrong with the present setup and thus copies the last successful copy it made back into the Registry (and any modified ".INI" files). I just don't know what triggers the rewrite.
Semper Vaporo,
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sightbeagle - Posts: 20
- Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2014 10:57 pm
Re: Reverted to defaults
Thanks for that info. I think I may have figured out what happened. It looks like my "backEndPrefs" file was over written in the "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Sighthound Video" folder. I edited the file by hand and changed:
sS'videoDir'
p27
S'E:\\' <-- This is what I changed it to
(before it was pointing to something like this VC:\u005CDocuments and Settings\u005Cuser..[truncated])
This corrected the issue and I was able to see all of my old video footage, but the settings for the amount of space and time it uses to save video footage were back at the default, and when I opened the program it deleted about half of my video footage.
sS'videoDir'
p27
S'E:\\' <-- This is what I changed it to
(before it was pointing to something like this VC:\u005CDocuments and Settings\u005Cuser..[truncated])
This corrected the issue and I was able to see all of my old video footage, but the settings for the amount of space and time it uses to save video footage were back at the default, and when I opened the program it deleted about half of my video footage.
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Semper Vaporo - Posts: 331
- Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:51 am
Re: Reverted to defaults
Yeah the SightHound techs are always saying to not play with the files outside of the program's interface. (And I have shot myself in the foot a few times doing it with SightHound and some other programs!)
Was SightHound running when you edited the file? I could see that getting things confused, but I don't know why it deleted files unless it thought the disk limit was very low and was cleaning up to make space.
Was SightHound running when you edited the file? I could see that getting things confused, but I don't know why it deleted files unless it thought the disk limit was very low and was cleaning up to make space.
Semper Vaporo,
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Devin - Posts: 719
- Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2014 5:48 pm
Re: Reverted to defaults
Hi sightbeagle,
As Semper mentioned, tampering with Sighthound Video's files is not supported and can cause severe problems which we may not be able to help you recover from. If you've been altering the pref files it's hard to say what exactly has happened. Typically users will select to keep video on an external drive by going to the Storage settings and selecting the location to move the video to. When you do this Sighthound will still keep it's data directory including temporary video files on your local drive. This is due to the fact that video or database corruption can occur if the core data files and temporary video files become unavailable while Sighthound is attempting to write, which becomes much more likely when they are kept on an external drive.
If you feel at any point that the pref files, or Sighthound in general is in a broken state after tinkering with files you may need to start with a fresh data directory. In this case you can keep your rules and camera configurations by copying out the "camdb" and "rules" folder, delete the Sighthound Video data directory, reopen and close Sighthound Video, then copy over the camdb file and rules folder.
Regards,
-Devin
As Semper mentioned, tampering with Sighthound Video's files is not supported and can cause severe problems which we may not be able to help you recover from. If you've been altering the pref files it's hard to say what exactly has happened. Typically users will select to keep video on an external drive by going to the Storage settings and selecting the location to move the video to. When you do this Sighthound will still keep it's data directory including temporary video files on your local drive. This is due to the fact that video or database corruption can occur if the core data files and temporary video files become unavailable while Sighthound is attempting to write, which becomes much more likely when they are kept on an external drive.
If you feel at any point that the pref files, or Sighthound in general is in a broken state after tinkering with files you may need to start with a fresh data directory. In this case you can keep your rules and camera configurations by copying out the "camdb" and "rules" folder, delete the Sighthound Video data directory, reopen and close Sighthound Video, then copy over the camdb file and rules folder.
Regards,
-Devin
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sightbeagle - Posts: 20
- Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2014 10:57 pm
Re: Reverted to defaults
Devin, thanks for your attention. Sighthound was pointing to the incorrect harddrive. What would have been the proper way to point the program back to the video files on the E: drive? It didn't seem possible in tools > options > storage. When I changed the path there, it said I had an archive folder already on E: and it prompted to delete it.
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Devin - Posts: 719
- Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2014 5:48 pm
Re: Reverted to defaults
Hi sightbeagle,
If Sighthound is prompting to delete that archive it is because those video files no longer not match up with other database files, and you will likely need to start over with a new archive folder. This probably happened when your other files were overwritten. Be sure in the future to not edit any files in the Sighthound Video data directory as it can cause several issues which may result in loss of data.
Regards,
-Devin
If Sighthound is prompting to delete that archive it is because those video files no longer not match up with other database files, and you will likely need to start over with a new archive folder. This probably happened when your other files were overwritten. Be sure in the future to not edit any files in the Sighthound Video data directory as it can cause several issues which may result in loss of data.
Regards,
-Devin