Urgent Support Needed for File Corruption Issues - Students Losing Years of Work
Good morning. We are experiencing urgent issues with MuseScore at our school, where many students’ files are randomly getting corrupted and turning into 0KB files. This has particularly been happening more with ones saved within file shares.
We have ensured that all computers are running the most up-to-date version of MuseScore, as we saw on forums that older versions could be problematic. Despite this, the issue persists, and more files are being corrupted. For instance, one student saved a new piece of work, and within five minutes, the file became corrupted when they tried to open it again.
We have managed to restore some students’ work through hidden files, but this has not been successful for all cases. We have checked the AppData, backup folders on local computers, and ensured that our school antivirus software is not causing the issue.
We urgently need support to determine if this is an ongoing bug and any assistance on how to prevent this from happening and recover the corrupted work.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Comments
I'm not sure that you can do much to prevent this from happening as it seems to be an elusive bug which also affected MS3 for a while. You could mitigate losses by using file versioning:
https://musescore.org/en/node/369244
What OS and which version of MuseScore do you use?
In reply to What OS and which version of… by krasko78
Windows 11 - 4.4.3
This seems to be a problem more associated with saving to the cloud. I would suggest also saving to the student's hard drive. And/or doing something like that suggested by yonah_ag above.
In reply to This seems to be a problem… by bobjp
Thanks for the comment, this issue is mainly occurring when saving to the students hard drive. However we are trying what Yonah has mentioned
In reply to Thanks for the comment, this… by patelm2
The MuseScore Studio team would like to work closely with you on this if you don't mind. We have something to propose. Please continue watching this thread, we'll post an update. In the meantime, yes, go with what Yonah has advised.
In reply to The MuseScore Studio team… by krasko78
That's great news, is there any update on this as we would want to get this sorted and fixed as soon as possible.
In reply to That's great news, is there… by patelm2
Everybody wants this fixed as soon as possible, believe me. :) We are still working on it, it takes some time for something like this to go through the established procedures. :). But let me shed some light as to what to expect.
In the next version, 4.5.0, MuseScore Studio will be checking the saved file after each save to see if it is healthy or not. In case it is corrupted, MuseScore studio will show a dialog with a couple of options: Try again (simply retry the save) and Save As... (to try and save the file to a different location). Offering a "Try again" option on the dialog will allow the users to retry the save and let us know if retrying the save fixes the issue or not (always, never, sometimes - we don't rule out anything for now since we have not been able to reproduce the issue ourselves). It might be a somewhat random issue so we believe simply retrying the save could succeed the second time (or the third or fourth, etc.). The Save as... option will be there to tell us if the problem is related to where the files are getting saved. While we don't know yet what these two options will reveal, there is another result of this change: the users will know right away that their files have been corrupted, as soon as it happens, and if none of the options on the dialog help to save successfully and continue working, at least the users should have a healthy backup at that very moment. There's a bit more to it, but I'll keep it for later. :)
Since 4.5.0 has not been released yet, what we are doing right now is we are implementing this same coprruption check for 4.4.3 and will release it as soon as it has passed all the testing and approvals. I hope it is a matter of a few days.
In reply to Everybody wants this fixed… by krasko78
Hi Krasko,
I apologise for the delayed response.
We are still experiencing the issue despite updating to version 4.4.3. Could you please provide any updates on when the corruption testing will be conducted with 4.4.3 or the expected release date for version 4.5.0?
We are eager to support you in resolving this issue and are willing to trial any new updates or fixes you have. We are very keen on working together to get to the bottom of this problem.
Thank you for your assistance.
In reply to Hi Krasko, I apologise for… by patelm2
Some improvements will be part of 4.4.4 and 4.5
In reply to Some improvements will be… by Jojo-Schmitz
Progress on 4.4.4 can be monitored here https://github.com/orgs/musescore/projects/77
And on 4.5 here https://github.com/orgs/musescore/projects/59
In reply to Hi Krasko, I apologise for… by patelm2
Hi patelm2,
Just when I was thinking of giving you a new update, here you are asking for one. :) What I said previously was completed soon after I wrote you, but things changed a bit in the meantime. The initial idea was to release a 4.4.3 version with only the corruption check I mentioned (that's why it was going to be a matter of days), but then the team decided to make a 4.4.4 release with more fixes included. This is the reason for the delay. So let's wait patiently for 4.4.4. Unfortunately I don't know the exact release date, not even a tentative one.
In reply to Hi patelm2, Just when I was… by krasko78
Hi!
Thanks for getting back to me.
We shall eager await the 4.4.4 update.
Cheers,
Manoj
In reply to Hi patelm2, Just when I was… by krasko78
Whilst we wait for version 4.4.4 and the fix for identifying corrupt downloads (which seems like a step in the right direction) could we ask what URLs the downloads are served from. As this problem seems extremely intermittent I wondered if the issue could be with some peoples firewalls and blocks happening here. If they are all from a small subset of URLs we can allow these via an exception and see if that mitigates the issue.
In reply to Whilst we wait for version 4… by patelm2
https://musescore.org/en/download or click the Download link at the top of this page. Unless I'm wildly mistooken, there's only one URL.
In reply to Whilst we wait for version 4… by patelm2
@patelm2:
Are you saying that this issue only happens for online saves? Why not save locally instead, (or as well)?
In reply to Are you saying that this… by yonah_ag
Hi, we mainly save them locally. some do however do it with both and still have the issues occur.
In reply to Hi, we mainly save them… by patelm2
From your previous comment about firewalls/URLs I thought that it was only an online issue. Apparently not.
In reply to From your previous comment… by yonah_ag
Sorry - it seems my manager may have confused the situation :D
He had assumed the app was a web wrapper for the online service, so even using the desktop app when pressing save, it downloads a copy. I guess this isn't the case.
In reply to Thanks for the comment, this… by patelm2
Good to hear that the MuseScore Studio team are getting involved.
Just in case it helps, this is my personal file versioning scheme when I develop scores:
Scores Folder Structure
• Scores in development start life in the Dev folder.
• When I reach a significant point a copy gets saved to the Milestone folder and uploaded online as private.
• Scores ready for release are saved to the Published folder and uploaded online as public.
Score Versioning - a recent example
The corresponding uploads can be seen in the score's version history on musescore.com:
Usage Notes
Maybe this scheme is a bit too granular for your use but it can be easily adapted. It gives plenty of recovery/rollback options. As you can see, (no versions before 0.8), I delete some of the older Dev files periodically. I typically make a new Dev version after a session of editing, (which may have had some simple File > Saves as well because I don't use automatic saves).
I have made it more manageable via a plugin:
In reply to Good to hear that the… by yonah_ag
Thank you Yonah! we will have to try this in the meantime