files cannot be restored?

[joemiller]

when doing a control center file/utilities/restore I was greeted with the error message "files cannot be restored since they would corrupt your installation"

I am now in a nasty situation that will require a lot of cleanup time. please advise me what to do to avoid a re-occurance of said problem in the future.

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

Hello Joe,

This error may be presented for a number of reasons, but the most common reason is that the environment from which the backup was created has changed at the point you were attempting to restore. Should the file naming structure change, we may not be able to restore your references in the new location.

This could be a result of going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit operation system, upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, or also if your Windows user profile name changed.

Please send us an email to support[at]ninjatrader[dot]com and we can look into what exactly occurred at that time. Our support staff can log into your PC and manually restore the indicators to your installation without corrupting the install.

[joemiller]

hi matthew,

anticipating a possible problem I did the following:

the sequence of events [all in a short time window of just a few minutes ] was:
a successful backup
commented and copied a few lines of code from one indicator to another indicator
successfully compiled both indicators
uncommented the code in the indicator to which the copy was made
encountered problems when making coding changes so decided to restore
encountered the error described in my original post

I will send an email to NT Support per your directions.

thanks

[joemiller]

The NinjaTrader Support team tells me that NinjaTrader needs to be in a fully compilable state when restoring a backup file.

Therefore can I force complilation by such means as commenting offending lines of code so that all indicators and strategies compile .... and then doing a restore? The forced compilation would of course be illogical trash, but no matter, it would merely then be in a fully compiled state to then allow restoration.

Or for that matter would simply deleting an entire un-compiled indicator or strategy [if that did not cause other indicators or strategies to fail to compile] then allow a restore? The deleted indicator or strategy would have to be supplied by the restore of course.

[joemiller]

so far I like NT...a lot , it is one heck of a software package.

However, from my perspective, the backup/restore feature fails to meet my needs. Even a special help and restore by NT Support results in an unconpilable indicator. My experience has been that a restore simply cleanly restores one to a previously backed up state, which is what I need in some cases.

I can spend no more time on this so I will do backups by simply copy/pasting the entire NT folder. I think that will work. not as convenient but not an extraordinary amount of hassle.

[joemiller]

NT user friendly enhancement suggestion

NT Support says 'Yes, if you delete the NinjaScript files that have programming errors, compile so that NinjaTrader is in a compilable state, you can use the Restore feature to Restore your backup file.'

So merely getting rid of any offending indicators and strategies [and making sure what remains still compiles] will then allow the clean versions stored in the backup to be restored. Seems to be a nice easy way to do a plain vanilla basic restore to a previous state.

I propose that a message to the above effect be prominently displayed for user friendly reasons when NT restore is invoked and fails. Such a message would have saved me a lot of time and grief ... although is has been a valuable learning experience.