.dat file error when opening the game

[IceTea]

When I attempt to open the game, I get a .dat file error and the game terminates.....anyone see this?

MJ

[bear]

Originally Posted by IceTea

When I attempt to open the game, I get a .dat file error and the game terminates.....anyone see this?

MJ

Something like this happened to me yesterday as a first time occurence. It was weirder in this case. Boxes also kept popping up saying that a blank file will be created for Pedro Agosto, Jorge Ahumada, and so on. I was in the db I've been using to scout for my epansion franchise. I turned off my PC, restarted, went into config.ini, changed the initial db to Default, and was able to restart. Fortunately the problem didn't occur in one of my other databases.

Bear

[JCWeb]

Bear's response sounds alot like what happens when the "No Ratings Record Found" bug occurs -- it starts creating blank ratings records for every fighter in the game in alphabetical order. There has been alot posted here already on this, best advice is to exit from the game as soon as possible, assess the damage, hopefully insert a recent backup as the new "ratingrecords.dat" file in place of the corrupt one, then restart TBCB 2 and everything will be fine (or at least you've limited the damage to a minimum).

[IceTea]

Originally Posted by JCWeb

Bear's response sounds alot like what happens when the "No Ratings Record Found" bug occurs -- it starts creating blank ratings records for every fighter in the game in alphabetical order. There has been alot posted here already on this, best advice is to exit from the game as soon as possible, assess the damage, hopefully insert a recent backup as the new "ratingsrecord.dat" file in place of the corrupt one, then restart TBCB 2 and everything will be fine (or at least you've limited the damage to a minimum).

* I'm a computer novice. How do I backup the game?

MJ

[JCWeb]

What I do is backup the specific files that are likely to be affected, although you could go whole-hog and back up the entire database you are using after each session. I go into my C drive and look for Program Files -- OOTP Developments -- TBCB2 -- data -- then click on the current database, mine is called "My DB" then I will make copies of files like "fighters.dat" "ratingrecords.dat" and "history.dat" that I've found from bitter past experience can become corrupted and could create problems down the road if I don't create these backups. If I'm at the end of a session where I added new boxers, then I delete the earlier copy and make a copy of the one I just saved. When I say make a copy, I click on the file, then select "Copy" from the pull-down menu called "Edit" and then after the file is copied I will click on "Paste" from the same menu, and voila, you have a new file called "copy of RatingRecords.Dat." So far, every time I've been hit by the "No Ratings Record found" bug, I simply exit the program, go to this same folder, delete the now corrupt "ratingrecords.dat" file and rename the "copy of ratingsrecord.dat" file as "ratingrecords.dat" -- and then, after remembering to make a new copy of the uncorrupted file which I just inserted (very important!) then I restart the game--no problem. You obviously don't need to do this after sessions where you aren't adding or editing fighters, but I've got into the habit of backing up the "history.dat" file even if I run only a few bouts. I also back up "fighters.dat" every time I make a change like moving a fighter from Pre-Prime to Prime, etc. Hope this answers your question.

[IceTea]

Originally Posted by JCWeb

What I do is backup the specific files that are likely to be affected, although you could go whole-hog and back up the entire database you are using after each session. I go into my C drive and look for Program Files -- OOTP Developments -- TBCB2 -- data -- then click on the current database, mine is called "My DB" then I will make copies of files like "fighters.dat" "ratingrecords.dat" and "history.dat" that I've found from bitter past experience can become corrupted and could create problems down the road if I don't create these backups. If I'm at the end of a session where I added new boxers, then I delete the earlier copy and make a copy of the one I just saved. When I say make a copy, I click on the file, then select "Copy" from the pull-down menu called "Edit" and then after the file is copied I will click on "Paste" from the same menu, and voila, you have a new file called "copy of RatingsRecord.Dat." So far, every time I've been hit by the "No Ratings Record found" bug, I simply exit the program, go to this same folder, delete the now corrupt "ratingsrecord.dat" file and rename the "copy of ratingsrecord.dat" file as "ratingsrecord.dat" -- and then, after remembering to make a new copy of the uncorrupted file which I just inserted (very important!) then I restart the game--no problem. You obviously don't need to do this after sessions where you aren't adding or editing fighters, but I've got into the habit of backing up the "history.dat" file even if I run only a few bouts. I also back up "fighters.dat" every time I make a change like moving a fighter from Pre-Prime to Prime, etc. Hope this answers your question.

Thanks! What do you save it to, a CD?

MJ

[JCWeb]

... because the only problems I've ever had was with those particular files. If you wanted to be extra careful, though, you could save it to another folder or even to a disk or CD, I suppose.

[bear]

Originally Posted by JCWeb

Bear's response sounds alot like what happens when the "No Ratings Record Found" bug occurs -- it starts creating blank ratings records for every fighter in the game in alphabetical order. There has been alot posted here already on this, best advice is to exit from the game as soon as possible, assess the damage, hopefully insert a recent backup as the new "ratingsrecord.dat" file in place of the corrupt one, then restart TBCB 2 and everything will be fine (or at least you've limited the damage to a minimum).

JCWeb
Thanks for the input. I had not thought about this possible bug.
Bear

[Malcom987]

My kids always downloaded and corrected stuff for me. Now I am getting the fatal error dat.file and the program terminates. I have never adjusted any ratings. I read the response on how to make a backup and I may have been trying to read the mystic runes of some lost civilization.

How do I even know if there is a backup or not?

I am really distressed.

[JCWeb]

I am not a computer expert by any means, but I think the backup files (to the extent there are automated backups) are denoted by the ".bak" suffix. The key though is to look at the size of the file in KB in comparison to the one that may be corrupted. For example, right now for my DB I have a ratingrecords.bak2 file that is about 1148 KB compared to the ratingrecords.dat file (and backup copy I created) that are at around 1159 KB. If you haven't added alot of boxers to the game, the file should be alot smaller, maybe around 700 KB or thereabouts. If the backup is larger than the .dat file, it probably means the .dat file needs to be replaced with the .bak file -- or, if the bak file doesn't appear to be that big, another alternative is to go into the "data" folder for the "default" database and then you copy over the file that came with the game (my ratingrecords.dat file in the Default DB folder is about 729 KB -- this should be the same if we started with the same version of the game, earlier versions may have a smaller number in the 645-680 range) -- this should work if you haven't added fighters to the original game, as many of us have done.

On the times I have been hit by this bug, though, I have seen the ratingsrecord.dat file wind up at like 0 KB or some small number which will be the key indicator where the problem is. It's possible you might have some other key files (like fighters.dat or history.dat) out of whack, but it's been my experience that it's the ratingrecords.dat file that has been the one involved in the bug that has caused people's games to freeze up, crash, etc.

Good luck -- hope this explanation is helpful, if not follow up with more specific questions.