Data Corruption Solver

Start With An Automatic Repair

You should always perform an Automatic Repair or a Database Maintenance operation before you run any of the higher level trouble-shooting or data integrity checking utilities or perform any trouble-shooting activities. If CAPITAL fails attempting to do either an Automatic Repair or Database Maintenance this indicates you may have serious problems. Database files may be missing or damaged beyond report. In this situation contact CAPITAL Office Business Software for technical assistance.

If you are operating CAPITAL on a network you must ensure that all users have exited out of the CAPITAL program before you run any repair process. If you are running multiple copies of CAPITAL you should also close down every running copy of the program including any running copies of Visual Builder.

If you are recovering from a system crash and intend doing an Automatic Repair, it is recommended you run Scandisk first to check for hard disk file problems. If Windows itself is damaged, attempting to repair CAPITAL may not succeed. In some cases, the repair process may seem like it is succeeding but fail later on. Note that Scandisk must be performed on the computer (usually called the file server) that is storing your CAPITAL program and data files. Performing the operation on your local computer will not help.

To run Scandisk on most versions of Windows do the following:

Click on the Start button found at the bottom left hand corner of your screen.
Form the menu select Programs|Accessories|System Tools|Scandisk

Running the Automatic Repair operation does no harm to your system. You can run it as many times as you wish. It is also recommended that you run this procedure on a frequent basis as an insurance policy. It is not always possible to be aware of every time a system crash has occurred or when an operator has failed to close the system down correctly. The Automatic Repair process can sometimes prevent potential problems before they become major problems.

A second type of process called a Database Maintenance operation is similar to an Automatic Repair, however it also restructures and reorganises the physical contents of your data files. It is a more elaborate version of the Automatic Repair process but also takes longer to perform. To run this procedure:

Common Types of Data Corruption

What causes data corruption or loss? In 99 per cent of cases by CAPITAL failing to close down properly or being interrupted by a hardware failure, computer freeze or operator initiated reset. Other problems are the result of incorrectly installed network software, faulty network adapter cards, compatibility problems with other software, and memory problems, to name a few. If an operator, say, resets his or her computer while CAPITAL is processing transactions (or some other interruption occurs), a number of problems can result. These include:

Partially completed transactions

For example, an invoice may be created without an account code or stock items associated with it. Stock levels may be deducted but the customer account may not be updated, etc.

Misallocated transactions

These are more complex and are usually the result of the compounding of other operator or computer malfunctions. For example, a transaction may only be partially allocated because of a previous system interruption. Nothing is done to correct the problem. A second transaction is entered and allocated to the original transaction. When something is done to correct the inconsistency, CAPITAL then reports that a transaction is over allocated, or has the same transaction number as a prior transaction, etc.

Missing information

These can cause simple or complex problems. CAPITAL keeps in memory what information has been added, deleted or changed and only periodically saves this information to disk. (Otherwise your computer would be impracticality slow to operate.) If an interruption occurs before updates can be saved, account files, invoices, etc., can also "disappear". Again, an Automatic Repair will get this information back, but if this is not done immediately after the problem occurs, all kinds of confusing problems can result: duplicated invoice numbers and stock ID's for example. Or repeated information. For example, when re-totalling transactions, CAPITAL deletes the old data files relating to it, and replaces it with new information. However, if it can't find the old information it can't delete it. When an Automatic Repair is performed, both the old and new information is restored. Result: a doubling up effect. The contents of invoices, for example, may be repeated within the transaction.

Troubleshooting Procedures

Assuming your problems are minor relative to the size of your database, it may be worthwhile to manually correct these inconsistencies rather than restore a back-up. The first step involves finding if there are errors in your system. This is discussed first.

1. Check for repeated transactions. Run Repeated Transactions and check the customer and supplier files. If repeated transaction numbers ARE found, edit one of the offending transactions and change the number.

2. Do a Customer or Supplier Accounts Recalculation which will detect almost all errors concerning invoices and payment allocations. Of course, if you haven't done an Automatic Repair first, the procedure will only make matters worse.

If CAPITAL reports errors, a list can be sent to your printer. In many cases you may be able to edit the transaction and correct the problem. If this is impractical or fails to resolve the problem, delete the transaction and re-enter it.

3. Print a Trading Statement each month. (This is only for users of CAPITAL who do not have CAPITAL GL Controller--the general ledger.) If the total of your stock sales plus miscellaneous charges does not match the total of your invoice sales, CAPITAL will report the error when attempting to balance your accounts.

If you do get an error, the next step is to narrow it down. Print a Trading Statement for a smaller and smaller date range until you have narrowed the problem down to a particular day. You can then view each transaction on this day, checking for errors. Alternatively, the computer can find the error for you.

Select Recalculate Invoices and specify the invoice number range to analyze. If the total value of stock items sold does not match the invoice total, the error will be reported. CAPITAL will make several suggestions. It will let you ignore the error or it can "balance" the transaction for you. For the first time, do not let CAPITAL automatically correct the problem until you have examined each invoice to see what the problem is. Compare your paper copies of the invoice against the computer records. Edit the transaction, if necessary, to ensure that the correct goods have been sold. (You must also keep a close eye on Stock Control to ensure that any adjustments do not make your stock levels inaccurate. You may also have to manually readjust your stock levels.) Finally, the invoice total cannot be made to balance until you have gone back to Recalculate Invoices and instructed CAPITAL to "fix" the problem.

4. Recalculate all transactions in your system. This should be done occasionally and may take some time to do. See point 2 for error correcting procedures.

5. Print an Account Balances Report for customers and suppliers. Preview the report to the screen in detailed mode, rather than in summary mode. This will find errors the other procedures may have missed.

6. Do a File Integrity Check if you suspect damage caused by a intermittently faulty hard disk or computer virus. This procedure takes a VERY LONG TIME to perform, but it will check if any "invalid" data bytes are in your files. These are character codes that would not normally be typed into your files via the keyboard.

7. Do a manual accounts reconciliation. The procedure is the same for customers and suppliers. It involves:

Printing an Account Balances Report for the previous month.

Add the totals from the Sales Report.

and subtracting this total from the Payments Report from the current month.

This should add up to the account balance for the current month.

In general this procedure is a very good way of checking for any inconsistencies. However, an imbalance can sometimes be deceptive. For example, if an account is deleted in a current month and a reconciliation is then attempted on previous months, there may be a valid difference. This will be the difference between sales for the deleted account, less payments received for the deleted account during that period.

Note that reconciling foreign currency accounts is more complex. You should print an exchange rate gain/loss report which needs to be added to the monthly transaction total.

The manual reconciliation procedure described above also makes a number of simple assumptions that may not be correct in every case. It presupposes, for example, that payments affect prior (not future) transactions. For example, if you had a payment as a positive amount in January that was linked to an adjustment/credit note from a previous period, then the payment would show up in the January reconciliation. However, the credit is outside the sales reporting range. In affect, you have issued an adjustment/credit note to a transaction that was raised in some future period. CAPITAL will allow you to do this and maintain the integrity of your accounting records, however, such unusual procedures make manual reconciliation difficult. You should consider this possibility before assuming a data corruption problem.

Common Account Recalculation Errors

These are the error/warning messages you are most likely come across if your data files have suffered damage:

Could not allocate invoice number

This could indicate multiple customer accounts with identical account codes. This will not occur under normal circumstances but if your system was previously corrupted, repeated codes may have been allowed to be entered. Once the repeated account code is deleted, be sure to recalculate the account balance.

Amount exceeds value of transaction

Indicates corrupt transaction payment/credit note allocation data. Delete the offending transaction and re-enter.

Bad allocation

Delete and re-enter the transaction. This problem may be caused by transactions in the system with duplicate transaction numbers.

Allocating transactions message always appears

Users have logged on with an earlier date. Ensure in a network that all users get their time and date settings from the file server, otherwise this message may appear unnecessarily often.

Also ensure that the Age by Terms setting is unticked for best performance.

Duplicate customer or supplier account codes

If you find duplicate customer or supplier account codes in your system you'll want to know what causes this and how it can be fixed.

Duplicate account codes usually point to either hardware malfunction or the failure of operators to correctly exit from the system. This results in damaged "index files". These files can be reconstructed by running either the Automatic Repair or Database Maintenance utility previously mentioned. However, until this is done, CAPITAL may be unable to locate information within its data files and therefore cannot prevent users from re-entering data (such as customer or supplier accounts) that may already been input into the system.

The usual result is duplicate account codes, invoice numbers, etc.

If you find a duplicated customer or supplier account code do the following:

1. Determine which account record you wish to keep. Any information found on the record you wish to remove that is not found on the one you wish to keep, should be manually entered across.

2. Rename the account code you wish to keep to "XXX". CAPITAL will warn you that the account code will be changed. Note that you must do this when other users of the system are not invoicing or performing related activities that may prevent CAPITAL from accessing all the information it needs.

3. Go back to the account you wish to remove. Try to delete the account. If the balance of the account is zero, CAPITAL will allow you to delete the account. If this operation is successful move to step 5.

4. If you cannot delete the account because of a non-zero balance, go to either Customer or Supplier Entries and select the account. Press the Statistics button and then press Recalculate. The account balance will be reset to zero. Go back to step 3.

5. Go to Customer or Supplier Accounts and bring up account "XXX". Rename the account code back to your original account code.

If you have duplicate account codes you may also have duplicate transaction numbers. Is recommended you run the Repeated Transactions utility.

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