[WriteLog] Lost log file -- Advice?

[Dean Wood]

Hi Scott,

Here are a few guesses on what happened:

Option 1: When you launched Writelog on each of the 4 machines, you
did not explicitly save the .wl file. (you just started a new contest,
selected the contest, and established the Writelog network)  If you do
not save a .wl file, Writelog does not generate a journal file on a
given machine.  So if the power suddenly went away, there was no .wl
file or journal file to recover on the 3 machines in the first place.
The reason that the 4th machine did have the .wl and journal is that
it probably was the only one where QSOs were actually being logged in
the first part contest.  Maybe spotting or dupe checking was done on
the other machines, but not logging.  When trying to log the first QSO
in an unsaved .wl file, Writelog prompts the user to save.  The person
operating the first machine chose to save, but there was no warning on
the other machines.

Option 2: The journal file gets saved in the same location as the .wl
file.  Maybe you started a .wl file on one machine, and for the other
3 machines, you opened that file in Writelog across your Windows
network using the network drive map path to that one machine.  The 3
other machines would be referencing the .wl on that one machine
instead of saving the .wl and journal to their local hard drives.

Option 3: Was a new antivirus program loaded on the 3 machines
recently, or any changes made to the antivirus settings?  I operated a
contest once at a station that was running the Avast antivirus
program.  It decided the contest logger was a dangerous program and
opened it in a "sandbox" which caused any changed files to not take
effect in that directory.

73...
-Dean - N6DE