(Archived) Corrupt database? Evernote crashes on launch.

[Pretz 1]

My Evernote has had a total meltdown.  Try to launch it and it crashes immediately on both iMac and Macbook Air.  I suspect it might have something to do with a corrupted PDF as I have had a few random crashes recently when trying to mark up a PDF with Skitch.  Was working with a notebook / tag combination that included several of these marked up PDFs when the terminal problem occurred.

 

Have been able to use Evernote browser version as a temporary workaround, but as I rely on Evernote heavily for all my consulting work this is a major problem.

 

I have read in https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23172211  that I can download everything again from the servers, but if I do that, and it's a PDF corruption problem, will the underlying problem recur?

 

Any suggestions? 

[gazumped 11,666]

If you have any local notebooks or unsynced notes you're kind've stuck,  because you need Evernote to load for at least long enough to export the content if you're going to save it.  If you don't have anything like that,  you can follow the processes that have been detailed in the forums to back up your existing files - just in case - and then trash the current setup and wait for a restore from the server.  If you have a lot of notes,  or if your database is a big one - and for comparison mine is 11GB and 16,000 notes - the refurb will take at least 2/3 days.  You could edit the suspects note(s) in the meantime to extract the PDF files and/ or delete the notes via the web,  so your new database is clear of them.

 

Depending on your hardware you may find that things slow down considerably while the database is being refreshed - Evernote was definitely unusable for me,  but again YMMV.

 

On the encouraging side,  my new database is new,  shiny and (probably simply my imagination) quicker than the previous version.  Good luck!

[Pretz 1]

Thanks for the advice.  I don't have local notebooks or unsynced notes, so OK there. I've pretty well isolated the issue to the notes that contain PDFs that have been marked up. So I'm thinking that maybe it's more of a display problem than a database problem.  I'll try finding and removing those notes and see if that works.  Might save me a few days of syncing!

[Pretz 1]

OK - gradually unpicking this problem.  It's not a database problem it's a Preview problem.  The PDFs that Evernote is gagging on have been marked up with either Skitch or PDF Pen (I use both, so can't tell if it's one or the other that's causing the problem).  The predictor is that they won't display a preview thumbnail when viewed in Finder and they won't open in Preview.  Now while Preview handles the exception and throws a message: "an error occurred with the preview of this document", Evernote just crashes when it tries to display either a thumbnail or a preview.  

 

So I am now trawling through all such files using the browser version (which doesn't have any problem with the files, but interestingly doesn't display the markup), saving the files to the desktop and deleting the notes.  Once I have done all that  I will simply print out the PDFs, scan them back into Evernote and all should be well.

 

The only difficulty I am still having (apart from the sheer tediousness of the process) it that while I can rescue the Air after an Evernote crash by quickly clicking on a 'safe' search when it opens, the desktop version refuses to play ball and crashes quicker than I can trick it into looking at safe content.  I may still have to restore from the servers but will have a good go at it once I am sure I have purged all the poisonous PDFs.

[Adjusting 276]

The only difficulty I am still having (apart from the sheer tediousness of the process) it that while I can rescue the Air after an Evernote crash by quickly clicking on a 'safe' search when it opens, the desktop version refuses to play ball and crashes quicker than I can trick it into looking at safe content.  I may still have to restore from the servers but will have a good go at it once I am sure I have purged all the poisonous PDFs.

 

Try this to prevent it from opening the offending notes on startup:

1) Create a new free account

2) Log in to your new account

3) Click on the Notebooks button in the sidebar

4) Click on the Account popup

5) Select Add another account

6) Login to your main account

At this point your account should log in and show you your Notebooks. Now you can do a “safe” search.

[Pretz 1]

Thanks. I solved it a different way. Used the menu bar 'add note' facility to wake Evernote in the background, waited a few minutes for the next sync to remove the corrupted notes, then opened it - and it stayed open. has been running stably since so I think it's now 'case closed'. Now to get that 2 hours of my life back!