What the hell - Seek Failed on Final Draf 6

[DoubleIT]

I was working on my script on my sort of crappy laptop with a battery that lasts seriously 5 seconds. It was plugged into the wall and by mistake my foot hit it and it came unplugged. By the time i had it plugged back in the comp shut down. No biggie, i cntrl s every minute or so by instinct. I reboot, load up the script and it errors out saying "seek failed in c:\location of script" and doesnt load. I tried making a copy and loading that, i tried starting final draft and opening it from there and it would load, get to 39% then error out. I can open it in notepad and see the text in there but it will be a pain in the *** to put it back in. I also tried opening it on my desktop, same problem. What the hell happened? How do i fix this? Final Draft 6.0.2.5 on an XP machine.

[WritingFool]

Believe it or not, Ive had the same problem. Older Laptop I work with had older version of Final Draft, on it. One day it was working perfectly, then one morning wouldnt boot. I tried uninstalling it, then reinstalling because nothing else worked. To no avail. Then I did same on my desktop to see if somehow the CD was messed up. All worked fine.

I contacted final draft. Believe it or not they told me that there was known issues with older versions of final draft and older O.S. systems, primarily laptops. that is exactly what the technical support person told me. didnt make sense, but thats all they were willing to do for me. Of course, I could upgrade for a price.

Have you tried installing the Disk on a desktop of different Computer?
Im stuck with using a very old version of Final DRaft on my laptop. Lucky for me I have desktops and newer versions there. So I hope you have a fall back, or you come to some resolve that I couldnt with my similiar incident.

Good luck. Wish I had something better to tell you.

[DoubleIT]

Believe it or not, Ive had the same problem. Older Laptop I work with had older version of Final Draft, on it. One day it was working perfectly, then one morning wouldnt boot. I tried uninstalling it, then reinstalling because nothing else worked. To no avail. Then I did same on my desktop to see if somehow the CD was messed up. All worked fine.

I contacted final draft. Believe it or not they told me that there was known issues with older versions of final draft and older O.S. systems, primarily laptops. that is exactly what the technical support person told me. didnt make sense, but thats all they were willing to do for me. Of course, I could upgrade for a price.

Have you tried installing the Disk on a desktop of different Computer?
Im stuck with using a very old version of Final DRaft on my laptop. Lucky for me I have desktops and newer versions there. So I hope you have a fall back, or you come to some resolve that I couldnt with my similiar incident.

Good luck. Wish I had something better to tell you.

This is the latest ( i think?) version of final draft, on a laptop running XP. Final Draft will still load fine on the laptop, it just will not load the script. So i can load other scripts or start a new one but i can not load the one i am working on, on any computer.

[Richard]

Sounds like the file's borked, to be honest.

[WritingFool]

Okay. My bad. Thought you had problems with the entire program.
Now it just sounds like a corrupted file.
You say you can open it in Notepad right?

Wel, before going to the trouble of doing that, perhaps try downloading a shareware program, like movie maker, or the like, that will keep the formatting intact. Then open your file with that program. Save it under a different name, then use your final draft to open the newer file. Thats what I would try if I were in your shoes.
Let me know if it works.

[rickdemille]

DoubleIT,

Sorry about your problem, it does sound like file corruption. I don't have Final Draft so I don't really know what the files look like. If your system was writing the file (saving it, timed backup, etc.) when the power lost, Final Draft my not be able to load the file complete.

The best thing is to get them to help you, they know the structure of the file, how and when the writes take place, and any and of file markers it may use.

WritingFool's advice is very good, I would try that next.

Then, if that doesn't help, you may try this on a BACKUP of your original file. Don't take a chainsaw to your original file, there's always a chance you will make things worses.

If you can open it in note pad, scroll down through the file and look for any strange characters, happy faces or symbols that make you think the compuer is swearing at you. Delete this part of the file (it may be the corrupt part) and try to open it again in Final Draft.

If that doesn't work, copy your original file to a disk of some type for safe keeping. Then click on "Start", "Run", and type "cmd" in the box that says 'open'. You should get a large black box with an evil looking line that starts "C:\ . . ."

Don't panic, the "C" prompt is your friend. We are going to run an old DOS program called "Checkdisk" that's designed to check the health of your files. There is also an option to repair any problems it finds. Honestly, I'm not sure this is going to do any good, but it's worked for me in the past on occasion.

On the line in the black box that starts with "C:\ " and may have more characters after it, type "chkdsk /r". If the front of the file is not connected properly to the end of the file, this may fix it.

It's not much, but I hope it works for you.

Rick

[Richard]

CHKDSK isn't likely to solve this one - especially if what's happened is that the file's been corrupted due to being saved when the power went off. Best case, it'll spit a load of useless files into your root directory. And a Final Draft file is going to be stuffed with symbols, even if the file's completely fine.

[rickdemille]

I agree, chkdsk is a real long shot, but a thousand to one shot will work every thousand or so times - theoretically.

I would be surprised if it worked, but it's something when all else has failed.

Best,

Rick

[DoubleIT]

I agree, chkdsk is a real long shot, but a thousand to one shot will work every thousand or so times - theoretically.

I would be surprised if it worked, but it's something when all else has failed.

Best,

Rick

Well one the bright side its only the first act, 22 pages, and the text is in there in notepad, so i can print it out and retype, id rather not but its not the end of the world. Im more worreid about why it happened and prevent it from happening again when its 100 pages instead. Then i would have a melt down.Thanks for the tips... off to start bucks to work on act 2 :)

[Richard]

Chkdsk is more like a shot in the dark, inside a box. It's there to fix disk problems rather than individual files.

[WritingFool]

Double, have you tried cutting and pasting from notebook tofinal draft, in sections. Small sections.

i have a wheel mouse I work with when formatting, so it makes everything really easy. Its a long tedious process, but it might be less time consuming then re-typing it.

Just a thought.

[DoubleIT]

Double, have you tried cutting and pasting from notebook tofinal draft, in sections. Small sections.

i have a wheel mouse I work with when formatting, so it makes everything really easy. Its a long tedious process, but it might be less time consuming then re-typing it.

Just a thought.

I ended up just printing it out and rewriting it and its now a lot better than what i had before so it was a good excuse to rewrite the first act anyway. hopefully that never happens again though

[Enigma]

... hopefully that never happens again though

Count on it happening again, the same as you can count on you HD going south.

[dpaterso]

I ended up just printing it out and rewriting it and its now a lot better than what i had before so it was a good excuse to rewrite the first act anyway. hopefully that never happens again though

Sounds as if you should kick your power cable out more often, if the script you lose ends up a lot better with rewriting.

-Derek
Derek's Web Page - stories, screenplays, novels, insanity. (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/DPaterson57/scripts.htm)
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