TBCB2 Fatal Error

[Boerboel]

I have been playing TBCB2 for close to 2 years without problems. Suddenly, my game wont play now. I get a Fatal error: error reading history.dat-file. Program terminated error. How can i fix this?

[JCWeb]

I suggest you email Andreas Raht at OOTP Technical support to get some "official" advice. Based on my experience, this looks like it may be a variant of the "No Ratings Record" bug which in essence means that one of the key files that the program looks for upon startup (which are history.dat, ratingsrecord.dat and fighters.dat) may have been deleted or somehow corrupted. If you want to try self-help instead of waiting for Andreas, you can go into your computer's program files for TB2 and open the folder labeled "data" for the current TB2 database and check for these files. If any of them are missing or empty (0 KB), then look for a backup file (same file with a .bak suffix) and copy/rename that file making sure to also keep a copy of the backup file on hand. Then try restarting the game once the missing file(s) are in place. (Keep in mind you may lose a bit of data from the last time the automated backup was made, depending on what was going on when the error occurred.)

As standard practice, I generally make backup copies of history.dat and fighters.dat after every session and copies of ratingrecords.dat after every session where I add or edit a fighter's ratings.

Regardless, good luck and hope you get your game going soon.

[Scoman]

Originally Posted by Boerboel

I have been playing TBCB2 for close to 2 years without problems. Suddenly, my game wont play now. I get a Fatal error: error reading history.dat-file. Program terminated error. How can i fix this?

Actually the same exact thing happen to me just the other day, I had to uninstall and reinstall. I can't remember what caused it,I know I terminated the program manually for some reason(ctrl alt del) ,then after that, I got that message,Fatal error: error reading history.dat-file,when the game was loading.First time it ever happened in years of owning the game.

[jofre]

Originally Posted by JCWeb

I suggest you email Andreas Raht at OOTP Technical support to get some "official" advice. Based on my experience, this looks like it may be a variant of the "No Ratings Record" bug which in essence means that one of the key files that the program looks for upon startup (which are history.dat, ratingsrecord.dat and fighters.dat) may have been deleted or somehow corrupted. If you want to try self-help instead of waiting for Andreas, you can go into your computer's program files for TB2 and open the folder labeled "data" for the current TB2 database and check for these files. If any of them are missing or empty (0 KB), then look for a backup file (same file with a .bak suffix) and copy/rename that file making sure to also keep a copy of the backup file on hand. Then try restarting the game once the missing file(s) are in place. (Keep in mind you may lose a bit of data from the last time the automated backup was made, depending on what was going on when the error occurred.)

As standard practice, I generally make backup copies of history.dat and fighters.dat after every session and copies of ratingrecords.dat after every session where I add or edit a fighter's ratings.

Regardless, good luck and hope you get your game going soon.

Good point. When it happened to me, all I had to do was rename the .BAK suffix to .DAT and delete the .BAK file, reboot the game and it worked.

[Boerboel]

Originally Posted by JCWeb

I suggest you email Andreas Raht at OOTP Technical support to get some "official" advice. Based on my experience, this looks like it may be a variant of the "No Ratings Record" bug which in essence means that one of the key files that the program looks for upon startup (which are history.dat, ratingsrecord.dat and fighters.dat) may have been deleted or somehow corrupted. If you want to try self-help instead of waiting for Andreas, you can go into your computer's program files for TB2 and open the folder labeled "data" for the current TB2 database and check for these files. If any of them are missing or empty (0 KB), then look for a backup file (same file with a .bak suffix) and copy/rename that file making sure to also keep a copy of the backup file on hand. Then try restarting the game once the missing file(s) are in place. (Keep in mind you may lose a bit of data from the last time the automated backup was made, depending on what was going on when the error occurred.)

As standard practice, I generally make backup copies of history.dat and fighters.dat after every session and copies of ratingrecords.dat after every session where I add or edit a fighter's ratings.

Regardless, good luck and hope you get your game going soon.

When i open my data folder it contains 2 folders, a default folder, and a myDB folder. The dafault folder contains a ratingsrecords DAT file and a fightersDAT file along with others. It does not contain a history file. the myDB folder does contain a historyDAT file with 22,263 KB of info on it. It wont allow me to open this file it keeps asking me what program to use to open it with. Im stuck. What next? I dont want to reinstall and lose all my data.

[Boerboel]

Ok, its fixed. All I had to do was drag the historyDAT file from myDB folder into my Default folder. The game works just fine now. Thanks for your replies and help

[javier_83]

thats good, that everything works

[jofre]

Originally Posted by Boerboel

When i open my data folder it contains 2 folders, a default folder, and a myDB folder. The dafault folder contains a ratingsrecords DAT file and a fightersDAT file along with others. It does not contain a history file. the myDB folder does contain a historyDAT file with 22,263 KB of info on it. It wont allow me to open this file it keeps asking me what program to use to open it with. Im stuck. What next? I dont want to reinstall and lose all my data.

Don't try and open the file. Just make sure that the file you open the game with matches the database you are using. So if the database you are using is "mydb" make sure under the options menu in the game next to database you've selected "mydb."

Here is what the file should look like in the program file, and the option screen in the game:

[JCWeb]

to follow up on what Jofre said, somewhere in the documentation or in the tech support advice I recall the suggestion that you should never use the "Default" db as your active db. You are supposed to rename it "my DB" or "current DB" or something like that. That way if something bad happens to your active DB you can use the default db to reconstruct.

glad the problem seems to have been cleared up, though.