Failure to start up

[ChuckWaterfield]

I've used X1 for years and years, use it constantly. But for two days, X1 won't start up. I get the initialization screen (sometimes) and then it just disappears. In the "process list" of Task Manager I can see X1service.exe start up, and generally disappear. Sometimes it does continue to stay in the list, with minimal CPU usage, but X1 doesn't appear. About once every 10 times, I can actually get X1 to start, and then it runs normally.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled X1 four times today. Version 6.7 and version 6.24. All the same results. I've Windows 7, 64-bit. No changes to any configuration options, haven't installed any new software. It just stopped working.

Any ideas at all????

Chuck Waterfield

[tjh]

Sadly I had this problem too yesterday after my PC shutting down a few times "unexpectedly" (I got in a rage with it and powered it off hard)

The only way I could fix it was to delete everything in c:\Documents and Settings\TiM\Local Settings\Application Data\X1

I was quite sad because of all my custom searched, but then happy because I realised I'd backed them up the week before.

Even if you just rename the X1 folder to something else, you'll then "start" with a clean version of X1. Make sure no X1 processes are running before deleting/renaming this folder.

Good luck, let us know if this helps.

[tjh]

Just to note, I'm not sure what path you'd use for Win7. It won't be the one I've listed above though.

[Kenward]

Here is an updated version of the KnowledgeBase stuff:

How to remove (nearly) all traces of X1 for clean reinstall

http://forums.x1.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3613&p=11286#p11286

[ChuckWaterfield]

Thanks for the advice. I've tried all sorts of clean-installs but no luck on that. But then tonight i figured out that it has something to do with Thunderbird. I had experimented with Thunderbird for the past month, and X1 was behaving well with it (with POP accounts in Tbird). I started pretty intensive use of Tbird on Saturday (i.e., creating a lot of folders, having about 50,000 emails total), and by Sunday night, X1 was refusing to start up.

So I renamed my folder where all the thunderbird info is stored, so X1 would be able to find it. X1 started up perfectly. I set X1 option to NOT index Thunderbird. Then I change the folder name back, and X1 would refuse to start up, even when it wasn't supposed to look for Thunderbird.

So that is the problem.... I don't know how to solve it, but it has something to do with Thunderbird. Any ideas????????

Chuck

[ChuckWaterfield]

Here's an update, after 24 hours of piddling around. Maybe this will be helpful to others that might encounter this problem. I took the folder where all Thunderbird emails are stored (50M and zillions of files) and started deleting folders and restarting X1 to see if it would work. I finally found a folder that had some emails in it that was causing X1 to shut down. I've put back all the 50M of files, less the one folder with problems, and X1 seems to run normally now.

I had X1 options set to NOT index Thunderbird. It shouldn't even have cared what folders were there, let alone what emails were in them. But it did care, even as it was starting up. There is likely some technical reason why this is necessary, but it did cause me to lose 3 days of experimentation. Anyway, I really hope this doesn't recur, but if it does, I think I can solve it in a few hours of experimentation.

Chuck

[Kenward]

Good research.

This makes me think that X1 needs a log that holds details of files that caused it to gag.

I have seen this in other software.

It may be that it exists in X1. For example, I find this file:

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\X1 Desktop Search\servUsage.log

It seems to be a record of what X1 is doing, but trying to work out what it means is beyond me.

[Kenward]

One further thought, a common mantra for people with Outlook problems is "try scanpst". This mends broken data files that can cause problems in X1 and other software.

Is there an equivalent in Thunderbird?

Google suggests that corrupt mailboxes may not be unknown to users of Thunderbird. So it might be worth investigating.

If anyone does find anything on this front, it would be nice to have feedback so that we can add it to the advice that gets handed out to people who turn up with problems in Thunderbird.

[tjh]

I'm an avid Thunderbird user. There's no equiv to scanpst.

Also, it's not mentioned what version of Thunderbird that's being used here. When I upgraded to 3.x from 2.x, X1's support seemed to totally break for me. But I was using IMAP and that's always been stated clearly that it's not supported.

[ChuckWaterfield]

Sorry, I should have indicated I was using Thunderbird 3.04. And I was hoping to use it in IMAP, but given that X1 couldn't index it when in IMAP, I switched to POP. And then it broke X1 anyway.... so then I had Thunderbird POP and no X1. Ah well....