Steam crashed FGC, resulting in XML parse errors

[njohn858]

I'm helping a less-technically-savvy friend troubleshoot a problem that arose on his computer yesterday. He had FGC running in the background while he was playing a different game on Steam, and something happened, which caused Steam (and his computer?) to crash, resulting in a dirty exit out of FGC.

Later, when he tried launching his campaign again, he started getting this error:

Error while loading campaign database.

A XML parse error occurred processing file db.xml - Error on line 0: Error document empty.

Back up of original database file saved to: <path to db.backup.numberstring.xml>

After making a backup of everything, I copied the files to my computer so I can fiddle with them, and despite renaming the db.backup..xml files, the error continues to be generated and the campaign loads without anything he's created. When i open the backup xml files in notepad, they're completely blank.

I see that there's both db.backup..xml and db.session..xml that have matching timestamps - the most recent db.session..xml file is blank, just like the db.backup. What's the difference between db.session and db.backup?

Is there anything else I can try doing? Or is he out of luck? He's willing to recreate everything he had done, but that's obviously not the ideal option.

Any advice/tips would be appreciated (and while comments about making backups are valid, it's something I've already told him, and it's a lesson that has been learned through this)

[Trenloe]

DB.backup files are ones created when there is an issue identified with loading the dB.xml file.

DB.session files are semi regular copies of working dB.xml files.

I’d recommend you work your way back i time through the dB.session files until you find one with data - open them in a text editor to check which ones have data.

[njohn858]

Thanks! We were able to partially recover some information going that route; we're grateful not _all_ is lost!