Ever Get a Recurring Nightmare?
I don’t. Which, I hope, makes me a normal person (as normal as Canadian can be anyway). However, I do have a recurring error that creeps up in about 5 to 10% of the upgrades that we’ve done so far [shameless plug time: yes, I'm using the instructions from my own blog post here to upgrade the employees using Smart Upgrade].
That error that comes up from time-to-time, like a recurring nightmare, is as follows: ”The file is damaged, obsolete or intended for a different version of Lotus Notes“. This error shows up on the 1st time that the employee starts his shiny new Lotus Notes R8.5.1 FP1 client.
Here’s a screen shot of the error (not that it really matters … but I’m a visual learner).
I *really really really* wish Lotus would change that error message to say WHICH file is damaged. But that might be too much to ask? Is it?
So, in the meantime … here’s something that fixed the problem when it showed up …
The Solution
Truth be told, this isn’t a “pretty solution”. It’s a bit long and it could probably be shortened up” but I decided to “play safe” by running a bunch of commands on local to be 99.9% sure that the files on the local are clean for the next start up. So … ready? Here we go …
01. [Click] on Start → Program Files → Accessories → Command Prompt
02. [Type] C: and press <Enter> on the keyboard.
03. [Type] CD\Notes\Data and [Press] <ENTER> on the keyboard.
04. [Type] ..\nfixup.exe -F
05. [Type] the Lotus Notes password when prompted and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
06. Wait for the fixup task to finish.
07. [Type] ..\nupdall.exe -R
08. [Type] the Lotus Notes password when prompted and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
09. Wait for the updall task to finish.
10. [Type] ..\ncompact.exe -c -i
11. [Type] the Lotus Notes password when prompted and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
12. Wait for the compaction to finish.
13. [Type] DEL CACHE.NDK and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
14. [Type] DEL LOG.NSF and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
15. [Type] DEL PERWEB.NSF and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
16. [Type] DEL DESKTOP8.NDK and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
17. [Type] EXIT and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard to close the Command Prompt window.
18. Start Lotus Notes R8.5.1 and verify if the error is still there. Continue to the next possible solution if the error reappears.
19. Once Lotus Notes is started, go to the Workspace.
20. [Right Click] on the Workspace and in the menu that appears [Click] on Properties.
21. [Click] on the 2nd tab of the In the small Info box that appears.
22. [Click] on the Compact button of the 2nd tab of the small Info Box.
23. Wait for the compaction to finish.
24. [Open] the Personal Address Book of the employee.
25. Close and Re-Open Lotus Notes R8.5.1 and verify if the error is still there. Continue to the next steps if the error reappears.
26. Verify that the Personal Address Book of the employee has the version 8 look & feel.
27. IF it does not have the version 8 look & feel, close the Personal Address Book then continue with these steps.
28. Open the Workspace.
29. [Click] once on the icon for the employee’s Personal Address Book.
30. [Click] on File → Application → Replace Design.
31. In the screen that appears, verify that the title of the box that appear says “Replace Application Design of names.nsf” or “Replace Application Design of contacts.nsf. If not verify your selection in step 29.
32. If you have the right database selected, [Scroll Down] the list of templates and [Click] on “Personal Address book”.
33. [Click] on “Replace”.
34. [Click] on “Yes” when warned about the “design changes”.
35. Monitor the progress in the status bar.
36. When the Replace Design is completed, [Open] the Personal Address Book of the employee.
37. Once again, verify that the Personal Address Book of the employee has the version 8 look & feel (it should be fine now).
38. Close Lotus Notes and Re-Open it to see if the error should be gone.
In the end, if you’ve done all this and the error is still there … you might need to backup and rename the DESKTOP6.NDK to see if that’s the culprit. I had to do that only once and it resolved the error. It created another one however: I had to rebuild the workspace of that particular employee.
Conclusion
Well, like I wrote, I wish Lotus would change that error message to say which file is damaged … so I might SPR it for a future release.
Also, if someone else had documented this somewhere else … sorry, I didn’t do a tourough Google search before writing this post.
As usual, thanks for reading!
Marc
