Recover X8 AutoSave .tmp files?

[WillyV]

Hi,

After a PSP crash with about eight open unsaved images I upgraded X8 to Service Pack 2 recently. When starting the upgraded version all the autosaved images were showing as expected and as usual I was asked if I wanted to open them.

I replied Yes but every single image was now marked as "Unable to open the file. Please verify that the file is valid". When restarting X8 there were no longer any autosaved images offered.

When checking the Temp folder, all the autosaved files still seem to be there judging by dates and file size. However, they all have the file extension .tmp and can't be opened by PSP.

I have tried renaming to some other file types I normally use without success. I have a feeling that I'm very close to my lost images but just barely can't reach them.

Is there a way to recover these .tmp files into proper images? I'm sure that's what PSP is doing when things are working as expected and hope I can do the same.

Willy

[trueblue]

It sounds like your files became corrupted with the crash. Someone else may come along with a suggestion of further help.

[JoeB]

It sounds like your files became corrupted with the crash. Someone else may come along with a suggestion of further help.

I'm afraid I'm not responding to help but to add my concern about the auto save function of PSP which doesn't seem to work as I would expect. When PSP does crash I expected that I would easily be able to get the images that were open back. I have never found this to be the case. Doesn't PSP save open files to some specified folder when a crash occurs? If so, what folder is it? And in what format does it save the files so that they can be recovered? I've never seen a simple answer to this.

Actually, I think one of the older JASC versions did recover the images in working condition after a crash, but that was long ago and I stand to be corrected.

[WillyV]

It sounds like your files became corrupted with the crash.

The main problem doesn't seem to be the crash but that something went wrong after upgrading to Service Pack 2. PSP recognized that there were autosaved files but wasn't able to process them in the correct way.

PSP will autosave images with filenames like PSP5B94.tmp whether they are existing images that have been modified or completely new images. Existing images will have a known file extension like .jpg or .png, new images will not have a chosen file format yet. But whether there is a known file type or not PSP will autosave the image with the .tmp extension.

My point is that PSP knows how to present these .tmp files as proper images, it just didn't manage to do it in this particular situation. Since I still have the files it seems I'm only a small step away from recovering them. They are probably not corrupted and fully recoverable.

Somebody from Corel will know exactly how a .tmp file becomes an image again and I wondered if I could achieve the same thing by (for example) changing the file extension.

[WillyV]

Doesn't PSP save open files to some specified folder when a crash occurs? If so, what folder is it? And in what format does it save the files so that they can be recovered?

PSP actually does what you'd like it to do and I haven't had any problems with this functionality except after my upgrade to Service Pack 2. My previous version (SP1) had autosaved files and SP2 detected this properly but was then unable to open them.

To turn on Autosaving go to File/Preferences/AutoSave Settings. Click the Edit Workspace tab, tick 'Automatically save backup copies" and select your desired frequency. Be aware that the autosave process seems to be very slow and may freeze PSP when it is doing its work. I'm not certain on this but there seems to be a connection which is confirmed by searching the forum.

To see PSP's location for autosaved files, go to File/Preferences/File Locations and select Undo/Temporary Files.

Regarding the file format: Whether an image has a known file extension or not, PSP will autosave it as a .tmp file in an unknown format, see my previous post for more about this. I am hoping to find out what needs to be done to recover a proper image from a .tmp file. We know this is possible as PSP itself is doing it all the time.

Willy

[hartpaul]

Could it be possible to revert PSP X8 to the SP1 or transfer the files to a machine that only has X8 SP1.
Just an idea but can tmp files saved by a particular version X4, X5 etc be opened by different flavors of that version eg X4 SP1 v X4 SP1 or X6 SP1 v X6 SP2.
A Psp file saved from X7 cannot be opened in an earlier version unless saved for those earlier versions.