I need help... PAF CTDs after import

[Gjest]

Hey All

I recently imported a large (30,000 individuals) gedcom from Rootsweb
into my (already large) PAF 5 database. It's the first time I imported
anything that large, but I never had problems with smaller imports.

The problem appears to be with specific individuals. Certainly not all
30,000... I have found 3 so far out of maybe 300 that I have checked.
The CTDs occur when I try to "open" any of the individuals for editing.
I can manually merge them but the problem remains. The problem also
affects all family members and the parents' marriage. Any attempt to
edit a family member or the marriage will cause a CTD.

The problem is fixed when I delete the individual and I think (not
sure) the individual's marriage. I have done both all three times that
I have encountered it.

PAF 5's check/repair utility insists that everything is fine. I have
tried exporting to a standard GEDCOM and using that to create a new
database... No joy.

The automatic match part of the "match/merge" feature causes a CTD. I
can however merge by manually entering individuals. This is the first
symptom that I encountered and I hoped that there would be a few bad
records for me to find and fix, and was hoping the check/repair utility
would find them. I have only found three so far... by going through
the database individual by individual. Merge still CTDs so there are
more to be found.

Is there a utility that can help..? Alternatively if someone wants to
look at my debugger results after a CTD I can provide them.

I'm using PAF 5 because it is closest to AFT that I started with some
years back. I find it easy to use and I can navigate intuitively. I
have most of the other popular packages and am not above getting
another one if it will fix my problem.

Thanks in advance for your time and attention.
-Jim

[Helen Castle]

BIG MISTAKE - I used to import holus bolus into my file - then I stopped.

My learnings from doing it.
How on earth will you ever know who is in your file? You will never get to
know who is in the file and never make connections to other people. Unless
you are prepared to print out you whole tree and read it from front to back.

Inconsistencies in data
Some of the problems you will have,
multiple persons not recognised because of spelling, inconsistency in data
eg:
Sydney NSW Aus;
Sydney New South Wales Australia;
Sydney, Whatever state, Canada;
Sydney;
Redfern, Sydney, NSW, Aus

Before you go any further undo the merge and back out of it - my experience
is that you will regret it.

Pull in parts of the file - I use Legacy and pull in a person not closely
related to me and all his ancestors family by family after I have had a look
at what is in their data. You do this by opening 2 files at once and
dragging the family across.

My preferred method is to enter EVERY person manually and I have entered
1000's. I know what sort of job I am advocating.

You will find that the data you have pulled in is full of errors - even if
it is someone who is very meticulous I guarantee that the info will have
errors they knew about and didnt get to fix or they didnt know about.

You will be able to identify the persons either by date, ID or some other
way but think very hard if you want to leave the import in place - you may
be sacrificing a lot by doing so.

Helen Castle
Narangba Qld 4504


<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

Hey All

I recently imported a large (30,000 individuals) gedcom from Rootsweb
into my (already large) PAF 5 database. It's the first time I imported
anything that large, but I never had problems with smaller imports.

The problem appears to be with specific individuals. Certainly not all
30,000... I have found 3 so far out of maybe 300 that I have checked.
The CTDs occur when I try to "open" any of the individuals for editing.
I can manually merge them but the problem remains. The problem also
affects all family members and the parents' marriage. Any attempt to
edit a family member or the marriage will cause a CTD.

The problem is fixed when I delete the individual and I think (not
sure) the individual's marriage. I have done both all three times that
I have encountered it.

PAF 5's check/repair utility insists that everything is fine. I have
tried exporting to a standard GEDCOM and using that to create a new
database... No joy.

The automatic match part of the "match/merge" feature causes a CTD. I
can however merge by manually entering individuals. This is the first
symptom that I encountered and I hoped that there would be a few bad
records for me to find and fix, and was hoping the check/repair utility
would find them. I have only found three so far... by going through
the database individual by individual. Merge still CTDs so there are
more to be found.

Is there a utility that can help..? Alternatively if someone wants to
look at my debugger results after a CTD I can provide them.

I'm using PAF 5 because it is closest to AFT that I started with some
years back. I find it easy to use and I can navigate intuitively. I
have most of the other popular packages and am not above getting
another one if it will fix my problem.

Thanks in advance for your time and attention.
-Jim

[Gjest]

Hey Helen

Thanks for your advice. I agree wholeheartedly, and I second all of
your recommendations.

However... (there's always a however). My bulk download was of ancient
and medieval Middle Eastern ancestry, 99.9% of which had no possible
duplication in my existing database. Documentation and sourcing was
excellent and actually much more than I was enthused about entering by
hand. Due to the remote connections of these lines I wasn't terribly
excited about downloading and merging six generations at a time either.
I had 4 choices all, nothing at all, 6 generations at a time, or enter
everything by hand. There was just too much documentation to enter by
hand and my entry tends to add even more in the way of typos and human
error.

Big mistake? ...maybe not, but definitely a problem and it is good
advice to try to avoid a situation like this. I have prior backups.
My database is intact and usable to a degree and every problem
individual I find may be the last one.

I take steps to guard my database. My level of concern is proportional
to the generations however... with 1 being top priority. 7GGF is
higher priority than a 77GGF.

I know I'm not the first person to have problems with a database.
There seems to be a conspicuous lack of high end check/repair software
available. A GEDCOM is a text file for Pete's sake... it isn't
complicated executable code with system calls, whizbangs and whistles.

Thanks again
-Jim

[Gjest]

Hey Helen

Thanks for your advice. I agree wholeheartedly, and I second all of
your recommendations.

However... (there's always a however). My bulk download was of ancient
and medieval Middle Eastern ancestry, 99.9% of which had no possible
duplication in my existing database. Documentation and sourcing was
excellent and actually much more than I was enthused about entering by
hand. Due to the remote connections of these lines I wasn't terribly
excited about downloading and merging six generations at a time either.
I had 4 choices all, nothing at all, 6 generations at a time, or enter
everything by hand. There was just too much documentation to enter by
hand and my entry tends to add even more in the way of typos and human
error.

Big mistake? ...maybe not, but definitely a problem and it is good
advice to try to avoid a situation like this. I have prior backups.
My database is intact and usable to a degree and every problem
individual I find may be the last one.

I take steps to guard my database. My level of concern is proportional
to the generations however... with 1 being top priority. 7GGF is
higher priority than a 77GGF.

I know I'm not the first person to have problems with a database.
There seems to be a conspicuous lack of high end check/repair software
available. A GEDCOM is a text file for Pete's sake... it isn't
complicated executable code with system calls, whizbangs and whistles.

Thanks again
-Jim

[Gjest]

Hey Helen

Thanks for your advice. I agree wholeheartedly, and I second all of
your recommendations.

However... (there's always a however). My bulk download was of ancient
and medieval Middle Eastern ancestry, 99.9% of which had no possible
duplication in my existing database. Documentation and sourcing was
excellent and actually much more than I was enthused about entering by
hand. Due to the remote connections of these lines I wasn't terribly
excited about downloading and merging six generations at a time either.
I had 4 choices all, nothing at all, 6 generations at a time, or enter
everything by hand. There was just too much documentation to enter by
hand and my entry tends to add even more in the way of typos and human
error.

Big mistake? ...maybe not, but definitely a problem and it is good
advice to try to avoid a situation like this. I have prior backups.
My database is intact and usable to a degree and every problem
individual I find may be the last one.

I take steps to guard my database. My level of concern is proportional
to the generations however... with 1 being top priority. 7GGF is
higher priority than a 77GGF.

I know I'm not the first person to have problems with a database.
There seems to be a conspicuous lack of high end check/repair software
available. A GEDCOM is a text file for Pete's sake... it isn't
complicated executable code with system calls, whizbangs and whistles.

Thanks again
-Jim

[Steve Hayes]

On 9 May 2006 10:54:09 -0700, [email protected] wrote:

Hey All

I recently imported a large (30,000 individuals) gedcom from Rootsweb
into my (already large) PAF 5 database. It's the first time I imported
anything that large, but I never had problems with smaller imports.

The problem appears to be with specific individuals. Certainly not all
30,000... I have found 3 so far out of maybe 300 that I have checked.
The CTDs occur when I try to "open" any of the individuals for editing.
I can manually merge them but the problem remains. The problem also
affects all family members and the parents' marriage. Any attempt to
edit a family member or the marriage will cause a CTD.

What's a CTD?

--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Gjest]

Hey Steve

I'm sorry. CTD is Crash To Desktop. An unexpected termination of an
application but the operating system is still intact. In fact one can
recover and restart the application software.

-Jim

[Steve Hayes]

On 10 May 2006 01:35:21 -0700, [email protected] wrote:

Hey Steve

I'm sorry. CTD is Crash To Desktop. An unexpected termination of an
application but the operating system is still intact. In fact one can
recover and restart the application software.

Thanks -- I hadn't heard of that before.

Is that one of those "This program has performed an illegal operation adn will
be closed" thingies?


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Gjest]

Hey Steve

Yes, that's right.

For anyone not familiar in this case the display is:

-----
Personal Ancestral File has encounteres a problem and needs to close.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.

If you were in the middle of something, the informationyou were working
on
might be lost.

Please tell Microsoft about this problem.

We have created an error report that you can send to us. We will treat

this report as confidential and anonymous.

To see what data this error report contains, click here.

Debug Send Error Report Don't Send
-----

-Jim

[Hugh Watkins]

It used to be a blue screen
everytime

things do get better

Hugh W



[email protected] wrote:

Hey Steve

Yes, that's right.

For anyone not familiar in this case the display is:

-----
Personal Ancestral File has encounteres a problem and needs to close.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.

If you were in the middle of something, the informationyou were working
on
might be lost.

Please tell Microsoft about this problem.

We have created an error report that you can send to us. We will treat

this report as confidential and anonymous.

To see what data this error report contains, click here.

Debug Send Error Report Don't Send
-----

-Jim

[singhals]

[email protected] wrote:

Hey All

I recently imported a large (30,000 individuals) gedcom from Rootsweb
into my (already large) PAF 5 database. It's the first time I imported
anything that large, but I never had problems with smaller imports.

The problem appears to be with specific individuals. Certainly not all
30,000... I have found 3 so far out of maybe 300 that I have checked.
The CTDs occur when I try to "open" any of the individuals for editing.
I can manually merge them but the problem remains. The problem also
affects all family members and the parents' marriage. Any attempt to
edit a family member or the marriage will cause a CTD.

The problem is fixed when I delete the individual and I think (not
sure) the individual's marriage. I have done both all three times that
I have encountered it.

PAF 5's check/repair utility insists that everything is fine. I have
tried exporting to a standard GEDCOM and using that to create a new
database... No joy.

The automatic match part of the "match/merge" feature causes a CTD. I
can however merge by manually entering individuals. This is the first
symptom that I encountered and I hoped that there would be a few bad
records for me to find and fix, and was hoping the check/repair utility
would find them. I have only found three so far... by going through
the database individual by individual. Merge still CTDs so there are
more to be found.

Is there a utility that can help..? Alternatively if someone wants to
look at my debugger results after a CTD I can provide them.

I'm using PAF 5 because it is closest to AFT that I started with some
years back. I find it easy to use and I can navigate intuitively. I
have most of the other popular packages and am not above getting
another one if it will fix my problem.

Thanks in advance for your time and attention.
-Jim

Check/repair only checks pointers, not data.

Backoff to the pre-import backup file*. Create a brand-new file for the
import; does it give you the blue-scream too? If so, NWTE. You can
live nicely for a long long time without a 77GGF.

*If it's too late for that, simply dele everything above whatever the
last RIN you entered prior to import.

Cheryl

[Gjest]

Hey Cheryl

My pre-import backup is intact and stable, thanks for your suggestion.

As far as being worth it, I'm afraid it is has become a challenge at
this point. I want to take a closer look at the file with a hex editor
when I find the next problem child. Maybe I can find a pattern.

I purchased and downloaded PAF Insight last night and started using it
today. It is supposed to surpass PAF in the check/repair department
and it may, but it hasn't found any problem with my DB.

PAF Insight hasn't crashed at all though, and performs a "match" prior
to merge without a hiccup. A similar "auto match" prior to merge will
consistently crash PAF. That's progress. (The merge feature far
exceeds that of PAF, and I'm glad I purchased it even though my DB
isn't fixed yet.)

If I do find the problem I'll pass it on to the PAF Insight people for
their consideration. The problem is something that doesn't affect
Insight already, so it may be an easy addition to Insight's repair
feature.

-Jim

[singhals]

[email protected] wrote:

Hey Cheryl

My pre-import backup is intact and stable, thanks for your suggestion.

As far as being worth it, I'm afraid it is has become a challenge at
this point.

[snip]

(G) I know the feeling. Good luck.

However, it sounds more and more like an error that is going to have to
be found by eyeball rather than electronically. Keeo us posted.

Cheryl

[Gjest]

Hey Cheryl et al

An update to keep y'all posted:

It's all fixed!

Everything is working, intact and no CTDs!

The funny thing is I fixed it when I wasn't really trying.

I was using PAF Insight to merge individuals. It pre-scans the DB for
matches and makes a presentation of possible duplicates and ranks them
by percentage. I noticed that at the beginning of my list (the 99%
matched) the individuals were not even close to being duplicates.

I then noticed that Insight must rank 99% matches based entirely on AFN
numbers. The creator of the database that I had merged had used the
AFN field for other reference information. I wanted to get on with the
merging and hoped that I would find the fix for the DB that way.

I started deleting them manually... didn't get far for the time it
took. I made a Gedcom and tried Notepad and Wordpad but they had no
wildcards, line edit or EOL provisions for automated editing. I
searched online for a Gedcom utility to remove AFN numbers... although
I really didn't expect to find one.

I did more searching for a text editor with advanced features and found
Boxer Text Editor. Downloadable, limited free trial... and very
powerful.

I converted my PAF DB to Gedcom and opened it with Boxer. From there I
selected:
Edit> Delete> Lines that begin with...
from the menus. I entered "1 AFN " and over 11,000 of the non standard
AFN's were deleted. I noticed one that was 54 characters long!

As I was saving, and getting ready to open the Gedcom with PAF I said
to myself... "Self... I said, wouldn't it be a kick in the pants if
that fixed it... and lo and behold..!

That's probably more useless information than anyone needs. The odds
of anyone else having problems with AFN numbers are slim.

If you do have trouble with a Gedcom I would encourage you to make a
backup and take a look at it with an editor like Boxer. Gedcoms are
plain ASCII text, in English and you can find info online about the
file structure.

Take Care
-Jim