Settings lost

tjannes · 2016-01-06 15:21

I'm running NetSetMan Pro 4.0.4 on a Windows 10 laptop.

The NetSetMan GUI was open, as I was trying to switch to a different profile for a test, when my laptop became almost unresponsive. As I could not even open the task manager to see which process was blocking everything, I did a hard reset of my laptop. After the reboot, all my NetSetMan settings were lost.

I can recover almost everything (aside from my very last few profiles) from the Backup directory, so no harm is done smile Is there any extra information that could allow you to see why this happened ?

NetSetMan Support · 2016-01-08 12:28

This is difficult to analyze as the loss of the settings happened during a crash. It's possible that the file was written to during the crash which corrupted it so that it became unusable after the restart. We know of a very few cases where the settings are lost after a reboot where we can't find the reason for. Maybe it's for the same reason as here, where due to a bad timing this constellation occurs. We'll look into this again based on your situation.

NetSetMan Support · 2016-01-08 16:57

Is the NSM Administration with settings.ini file encryption disabled (default) or enabled on your system?
(Preferences > Administration)

tjannes · 2016-01-08 17:38

It's still default. "Activate administration" is unchecked.

broc · 2016-10-17 20:34

First, thank you for a truly useful piece of software
I just had the same error described above
Windows 10 64 bit - NetSetMan 4.2.3

I was able to recover all of my settings due to a backup program that I have running so this is merely for bug tracking.
My settings were lost after windows crashed ... My best guess is that NetSetMan was performing one of the following operations
1) detecting my systems state (a change in IP address in this case), or
2) kill an active process (sshfs.exe)

Background-
One of the steps that I have NetSetMan perform is to launch sshfs upon connection to a VPN network and then kill the process upon entering any of my other states.

Independently from NetSetMan, if I have not either killed the sshfs program within ~60 sec of dropping the VPN or disconnected the mapped drive prior to disconnecting from VPN, then explorer.exe will become unstable and lock-up (without blue screen).

My assumption is that explorer had become unstable when NetSetMan attempted an operation and this led to the settings.ini file reverting to default.

Active Administration is also unchecked for me.

I hope that this helps!

NetSetMan Support · 2016-10-25 17:15

Thank you very much for your detailed report. While we're surprised that this problem occurred to you, we always appreciate bug reports like this get a better picture of problems that still exist.

In version 4.1.0 we've introduced a new settings file backup mechanism that should actually prevent problems like this. What it does is to always have a copy of settings.ini as settings.bak. At any given point only one of those file can theoretically become corrupted because the writing process is interrupted e.g. due to a system crash. If at program start settings.ini doesn't exist or is empty then the information from settings.bak is taken, so the user won't even notice the problem.

If this mechanism failed in your case, then this most likely means that both of the files got corrupted during the crash. This is highly unlikely but taking into account that Windows does some caching when writing files, we have currently no clue how to work around this problem without risking huge performance issues. In case you experience this problem again (possibly even reproducible) we can offer to create a special debug version with detailed logging that might help finding out what exactly is happening with the settings file during the crash.

Having said that: You can analyze the Bluescreen Minidump file and also have a look at the Windows Event Log to see what Windows logged as the problem for the bluescreen. While this doesn't solve the settings-problem, it might help you with the actual problem.

broc · 2016-10-25 17:41

thank you very much -

I did forget to mention in my initial post that I did open the settings.bak file to see if my previous settings were present. Unfortunately, the *.bak file had the default settings as well. While I am pretty certain that I could reproduce this problem if needed, it sounds like my case is an isolated one that I can generally avoid ... If this becomes an issue for somebody who cannot reproduce the issue, please let me know, and I will happily work with you to resolve it.

NetSetMan Support · 2016-10-25 18:44

Did you open the settings.bak after you ran the program and realized that the profiles were gone? If yes, then that's no surprise. Because if both files were corrupted for some reason, then after running the program the default structure was created in the ini file and backed up in the bak file.
If you can reproduce it, then first disable autostart of the program. Then reproduce the problem. After a reboot go to the program folder and copy both files (settings.ini and settings.bak) into a separate folder. Then look inside the files to see if one of them is broken or empty. After that run the program to see if the profiles are gone. If all settings are still present, then repeat this procedure until the problem reoccurs.
If some file is broken or the settings are completely gone, please send us those files for analysis.
After that first analysis we can either already see the source of the problem or at least we'll be able to create a debug version with a focus on the problem characteristics.

NetSetMan Support

#1 2016-01-06 15:21

Settings lost

#2 2016-01-08 12:28

Re: Settings lost

#3 2016-01-08 16:57

Re: Settings lost

#4 2016-01-08 17:38

Re: Settings lost

#5 2016-10-17 20:34

Re: Settings lost

#6 2016-10-25 17:15

Re: Settings lost

#7 2016-10-25 17:41

Re: Settings lost

#8 2016-10-25 18:44

Re: Settings lost