rleffler

rleffler

Well Known Member
I'm having an issue with Kitlog 2.0 on Vista 64. I'm looking for others that have installed Kitlog on Vista to understand if it's a Kitlog issue or an issue with my local implementation.

Please contact me via PM and I'll forward my contact information.

thanks,

bob
 
Probably Vista 64

It's probably vista 64 bit. I have a few apps I use that will not run on Vista 64 bit but run fine on the 32 bit versions.

Apps written for 16 bit systems will not run on the 64 bit operationg systems, but will run on the 32 bit.

Something about the OS hooks used.
 
cant get it to run on my vista 32

I have vista 32. I tried to move my kitlog pro from my old XP computer, where it worked fine, to my vista machine. I has not worked since. Matt has been very good about spending lots of time with me via email trying to get it to work. No joy.

It is very frustrating.
 
what kind of problems are you guys running into? Getting errors etc..? a little more details would be helpful.
 
Funny this topic should come up. I've been a big fan of Kitlog Pro. But I also found out a few minutes ago that my hard drive is shot and probably unrecoverable.

Guess who just lost 6 years of builder log entries?

That's not Kitlog Pro's fault, of course, but it underscores the fragile nature of what -- in the old days -- was a pretty indestructible log.

No more software for me. From now on it's either an online log (Expercraft, for example) or an old fashioned scrapbook or diary.
 
KitLog Backup

:confused:

I was under the impression that your could upload KitLog data to their site, so you have a backup of your data. Is that not the case?

John Edwards
RV-9A - Empennage
(Using mirrored hard drives in my computer)
 
will the drive spin?

Bob Collins said:
Funny this topic should come up. I've been a big fan of Kitlog Pro. But I also found out a few minutes ago that my hard drive is shot and probably unrecoverable.

Guess who just lost 6 years of builder log entries?

That's not Kitlog Pro's fault, of course, but it underscores the fragile nature of what -- in the old days -- was a pretty indestructible log.

No more software for me. From now on it's either an online log (Expercraft, for example) or an old fashioned scrapbook or diary.
Click to expand...
Will the drive spin when power is applied? Is it recognized by the computer in BIOS?
 
Bob,


Depending on the value you place on this data and what ever else you may have on your drive, it may be recoverable. However, it may cost you some bucks to get back. There are firms that can restore data off bad disks.

Also, I personally would trust your local hd over a web vendor. I run a large web site and I can tell you some war stories. There is no guarantee that any vendor may not into similiar issues.

The only answer is to have backups either way you go.

bob
 
Bob Collins said:
I also found out a few minutes ago that my hard drive is shot and probably unrecoverable.
Click to expand...

BTW, the data still exists on the platters of the hard drive. There are services out there that can recover the information. It depends on the extend of the problem with the hard drive. A head crash will destroy some data, but if it's a motor problem or electronics problem, all the data is recoverable. Even if you delete the files, they are actually still there, just marked as deleted in the FAT table. A low level format of the hard drive can also be recoverable by very cleaver techiques used in spying. Don't ask me how I know...

John Edwards
RV-9A Empennage
 
Well, I am some what relieved to hear that it's a Vista compatability issue. Matt's got to address that or his application will be dead.

I probably wouldn't have upgraded if I had know it didn't work. Now, I can't go back. Too much other important stuff that is working.

I hope it gets fixed quickly.
 
I'm lucky that my son works in our I.T. department so he got all the resources poured into the machine today. It is, sadly, a mechanical failure of the hard drive.

We're going to send it off to Ontrack Data Recovery. Cost for them to look at it: $100. Estimated data recover range cost: $500-$2500.

Ouch. Ouch. Freakin' ouch. I haven't made any $2500 mistakes on my project yet... 'til now.

ON the way home -- after I buy a new hard drive -- I'm gonna swing by Office Max and pick up a $4.95 binder and a $2 stack of three-ring paper. That'll be my new builder log.:(
 
Of course, there is nothing stopping you from using Kitlog and printing to hard copy once in awhile either.
 
Just an off topic note about backups since this has come up twice in the last month:

My website is backed up on my home computer w/apache running so I can build the site locally and just push it to the web server when I feel like it.

The local PC website (along with anything else I care about) is backed up on an external hard drive.

This buys me site redundancy (a meteor can take out my house or my web site and I'll still be OK), or any 2 disks.

Take it from someone who's been playing around with this stuff for 20+ years. Even one backup is just not enough for critical data, especially when it's cheap and easy to have multiple backups that run automatically. It kills me to see years of work dissapear like this. :(
 
crack it open

Bob Collins said:
I'm lucky that my son works in our I.T. department so he got all the resources poured into the machine today. It is, sadly, a mechanical failure of the hard drive.

We're going to send it off to Ontrack Data Recovery. Cost for them to look at it: $100. Estimated data recover range cost: $500-$2500.

Ouch. Ouch. Freakin' ouch. I haven't made any $2500 mistakes on my project yet... 'til now.

ON the way home -- after I buy a new hard drive -- I'm gonna swing by Office Max and pick up a $4.95 binder and a $2 stack of three-ring paper. That'll be my new builder log.:(
Click to expand...
Here is what I have done to get info off the drive (same thing Ontrackwill do):

Dead drive (drive won't spin up when power applied) -
take the board off the back of a good drive that is the same make/model and put it on the dead drive. I've found this works in a lot of cases. Once you pull the info off, put the bad board back on the drive that was bad (and now working) and check the warranty if it's less than 5 years old.

If that doesn't work, I've opened drives in the past and messed with the heads and platters.

If the drive will spin up, I bring it to work. We have the Ontrack recovery program. It will, in most cases, recover files up to 7 layers deep (sector been erased and written over 7 times). The bad part is all the files are FILE000.JPG, FILE001.JPG, etc. You have to then go through the files and rename them.
 
Bob Collins said:
ON the way home -- after I buy a new hard drive(
Click to expand...

Buy two of the same type if your computer can handle disk mirroring. When one drive goes bad, the other is a complete copy.

I lost about 3 hard drives in my past 30+ years in the industry. The first was in a Dell 200 that suddenly made a screatching sound. I lost everything. The second time was bad, but I had backups of almost everything. The third time was recent, and the mirrored drive was no problem. I just bought another drive and the re-mirror took a couple of hours, nothing lost.

BTW, I have been told that instead of buying a Dell 200 computer, if I put the money into Dell stock, I'd be a millionaire now. DOOH!

John Edwards
RV-9A
 
Acronis Disc Imaging

I run complete backup images of my drive every couple days using Acronis disc imaging software. For those not familiar, it will allow a complete restore of the hard drive including all installed software. I've used it to recover from a major blue screen of death (occurred during a XP auto update). With external hard drives costing about $100 for 100+ gig, there is no reason to ever trust a hard drive. I assume each day is its last. I would say that Acronis is not for complete amateurs, but it is not real difficult either. Get help from a computer geek the first time you use it.
 
Keeping a recent backup off site is important too, to cover theft, fire, etc. Incremental backups are needed to cover cases such as a file has become corrupted, and your backup has the corrupted copy too. There are a lot of ways to lose data.

I make a weekly incremental backup on an external drive, and store it at a friend's house. Another incremental backup is on a second hard drive. My web site is on an external server, but it gets backed up to my home computer, and the external drive.

And, be sure to test the backups by doing a recovery. I discovered once that I couldn't actually recover much of the data, due to user idiocy when selecting the backup options. Fortunately this discovery was made during a test, so I was able to fix the problem before I ever needed to recover any data.
 
skyfrog said:
Buy two of the same type if your computer can handle disk mirroring. When one drive goes bad, the other is a complete copy.
Click to expand...
Yep. that's what my son said too. Although as he was explaining it, I just sort of nodded like I knew what he was talking about.

I don't know when it exactly it happened that he got so much smarter than me. But he's in another dimension.
 
Bob Collins said:
Funny this topic should come up. I've been a big fan of Kitlog Pro. But I also found out a few minutes ago that my hard drive is shot and probably unrecoverable.

Guess who just lost 6 years of builder log entries?
Click to expand...

Sorry about your loss Bob. When I read that, I got an immediate sick feeling in my stomach. Anybody who has put the time and effort into building should be able to understand the loss. I just lost my hard drive a couple of months ago, however I've been in the computer business for 30 years and have learned not to trust this stuff a long time ago. The only thing I lost was some email for about 6 months.

However, software DOES save LOTS of time and allows you to do things that you can't with paper (photos, etc.). So, I would suggest a bit of caution, rather than complete abandonment.

For the rest of us building, one of the greatest little devices invented is the thumb drive. They can be had at any computer or office store for $30 or less. It's small and portable. Stick them in your USB drive whenever you use your construction log and copy the kitlog.mdb file to it. When I lost my hard drive, I still had the backup of my flying logbook and construction logbook on my thumb drive.
 
Bob Collins said:
No more software for me. From now on it's either an online log (Expercraft, for example) or an old fashioned scrapbook or diary.
Click to expand...

Bob, one more comment. I'm not familiar with Expercraft, and they may be completely safe.

However, make sure that any online software that you use is from a site that is backed up regularly. I am a web consultant and have seen many companies with web sites that do not have (adequate) backup (it is a business cost that some companies decide to compromise). Some have paid for this. In other words, the same thing could happen with an online log as happened to your local log.

BTW, the suggestion to send the hard drive to one of the recovery companies was a good one. I've known where this has proven successful. You might get lucky! Keep us posted, during your breaks from the Oshkosh BBQ!
 
Like I said, don't get me wrong, I don't blame Kitlog OR software. I like the program. But it's the effect it has on me that I realize caused my predicament. Did I make backups? Yep, there's an automatic backup function in Kitlog (at least the version I have). It wrote the backup to the same drive (the way I have it configured. I'm not sure it could have written to the second drive). Should I have copied stuff to the other internal drive? Yep. Should I have printed out and stuck it in a binder? Yep.

Why didn't I? Because with efficiency and ease comes complacency. And I got complacent.

Fortunately, all my images survived since (a) they were copied to another drive and (b) I pulled them into Kitlog via a CD.

I put the new hard drive in last night and tried to reload the Kitlog program (anticipating trying to restore the data latter on) and apparently the "key" that Besing gave me years ago is no longer valid. Oh, well, I needed another coaster for my beer glass anyway.

I'll send the drive off to the recovery place -- there's lots of other valuable stuff on it (although I was smart enough to make regular backups of Quicken to another drive) -- but if it goes up to $2,500...well.... geez, that'll push the old pay-as-you-go project back a little more.

But the most valuable lessons are the toughest ones to learn.
 
Now that the thread was hijacked to talk about backups......

I'm still attempting to locate anyone using Vista 64 bit.

Matt said it should work with Vista, but he doesn't have the 64 bit version. Just looking for another source to determine if it's an incompatibility issue or a configuration issue.
 
Thread looks quiet so I apologize for hijacking it... again.

Got the results from Ontrak today. The good news is the data is fully recoverable. The bad news. $1,600 (my son talked them down from $1895).

And, yeah, that's a lot to pay. OTOH, there's also pictures of Christmases and mother's and father's day past etc. Besides, my son knew what my reaction would be to the cost so he called his mother and got her OK first.

I got played. :p
 
Good news to hear Bob! Now repeat after me, I will dump my files to a CD/DVD every week.


An update for the original question. Kitlog has three exe files. If you put all three in the XP compatibility mode everything appears to work. You will get a error message on startup (at least on Vista 64) but everything appears to work fine after that.

I'm still working an issue with Matt about deleting records on the web site not working.

My original issue appears to be that I only put the kitlog.exe file in compatibility mode and not the other two.
 
Bob, I did it too...

I posted just a few weeks ago about losing all my data. I haven't sent it in to one of the expensive places yet but will probably do so.

In the meantime I hava a new computer with Vista on it and have had some issues running Kitlog. For example, every time I open it up it tells me there is an update from 3-12-06 available and asks me if I want to download it. I've said yes and it doesn't do it, I've said no and it still pops up every time I open the program. Also, the Help funtion doesn't work any more, I get this message:

"Why can't I get Help from this program?

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which was used in previous versions of Windows and it is not supported in Windows Vista.

For more information, see Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) is no longer included with Windows on the Microsoft support website."

I haven't asked Matt about it since I bugged him a lot trying to re-load the program from earlier version to the current without having to re-purchase it.

I've also noticed it doesn't have a "Backup" selection under the File menu any more but don't know if that is a Vista issue or I just wasn't paying attention at the last upgrade.

So, that's my experience with Kitlog on Vista thus far.
 
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