I can't open a .mscz file

• Feb 4, 2016 - 23:07

Today, when I was trying to show a friend a score I had written, I found that it had been corrupted by an automatic reboot that my computer did. I have tried to recover it from older files, but every single backup I can find is corrupted too. I've checked in AppData and in hidden files, and no other previous versions exist. Is it still possible to fix the file, or is it lost forever? (I'm running Windows 10)

Attachment Size
16-10.mscz 103.9 KB

Comments

Unfortunately, I'm not even able to open the .mscz in an unzip program, so it seems the zip file itself is corrupted. (FYI, the .mscz format is a ZIP-compressed version of the .mscx file.) So that tells me you have pretty severe file corruption. Out of curiosity, did your file get saved at around the same moment that windows shut down?

In reply to by ericfontainejazz

I'm not sure. I closed my laptop to put it to sleep, and something must've fatally crashed, so that might have been when that happened. It's just weird that it's never happened before. And the funny thing is, I thought to myself about three saves earlier to make a back-up. But I didn't make one. I should've listened to my intuition. Fortunately, I still have the music in my head, so I can still patch up what I remember.

In reply to by Ethan C. Neal

you said, "every single backup I can find is corrupted too"

Could you please upload those backup files here. I have trouble imaging that both the previously-saved backups AND your latest regular save would be corrupted...unless there is something broken with your disk or computer (and that might explain why your computer fatally crashed when sleeping).

In reply to by Ethan C. Neal

Unfortunately when I open 16-10.mscz in hexeditor, it see the file is completely filled with 0's (that would be 106,391 zeros). And when I open scxP8644.mscz, I see a brief header, but then the rest of file is filled with 0's.

So, this leads me to think there was some disk error...

Out of curiosity, are you able to save new files to disk and open them again (make sure they actually are saved to disk because files still might persist in ram...you might have to save, reboot machine, then open to make sure that files are actually saved to disk). If you have a disk problem, and if your windows 10 machine shutdown while sleeping, then my recommendation would be to not do important work that needs to be saved before your reinstall a new disk into your machine. Do you know how old your disk is? Maybe could you try saving to external disk or to musescore.com????

In reply to by ericfontainejazz

Hello!

I having similar problems with my mscz file, but Musescore is saying it is not a vaild .mscz. Even in here I tried uploading it, to see if someone from the forum can download the file and check if their Musescore can open the file and then make me a PDF. But even in the "Upload" section, I get a message saying it is not a valid .mscz file. I am very new to Musescore, I did not know anything about Backup files. I only would press the Save button as I move along in composing.

Can someone please help me! If I can just get it to open, that would be great!

Thank you!!!

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

thank you for the quick reply. I yesterday uninstalled my Musescore program and delete manually all files with Musescore from my registry. Then I newly installed the program. But before deleting everything and reinstalling. Saved a copy of the file, from "Scores" folder to a USB. I still have that file, that is the file Musescore is saying that the extension is not vaild. I have already selected the options to show Hidden folders and files. I did this after the crash and the musescore program began saying it can not read the file.

Is it possible I can email you the file and see if you can open it on your end? Also, I did not understand about the "If everything breaks, you can zip the file and attach the zip archive", can you explain that a bit more. I apologize, I am not very computer knowledgeable, but I do understand most.

Thank you!

Are you saying there are *no* .mscz files in

c:\Users\\AppData\Local\MuseScore\MuseScore2\

??.

(That is called the session folder). The file names found there are computer generated, so you will not recognize the name. If there are .mscz files in that folder it is best to find the most likely fit by viewing the files saved date/time in your Windows File Explorer. I use list view to see that info.

If there are no files, you may want to ensure your autosave backup setting is turned on, which by default are done every 2 minutes. I notice that the auto save backup file is overwritten sometimes when that backup runs. And it doesn't run if MuseScore is idle. I can imagine something *could* happen to the auto backup file during a crash.

To double check the auto save setting, select Edit > Preferences, General tab, for the "Auto Save" setting. It is on the lower right part of the dialog. If it is not on, I suggest you turn it on. The default interval is a backup is made every 2 minutes.

In reply to by Guerrero Ortiz

I can't open this zip file. I tried with my Chromebook which handles zip files in a simplistic way, so I tried it on Linux and had no luck there either.

It uses compression method 96 which appears to be unique to Winzip.

I don't have a Windows machine so I guess Winzip is not an option for me. I'm not interested in running Winzip under Wine to emulate Windows.

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