SMARTCAT SETTINGS LOST. AFTER COMPUTER GLITCH

Michael Baker

I came into the shack to find my computer in an apparent restart lockup.

Did a manual restart and got the "Windows has encountered a problem but we are fixing it and will restart when done" message. The progress window hit 100% and just sat there. Waited a long time (5min) and finally hit the power button and just did a power off/on restart.

All appeared normal until I opened SmartCAT and found I had gone from 8 or 10 setups to 2.

Not good. Uninstalled SMARTSDR, rebooted, reloaded SMARTSDR, still no joy.

Checked the Device Manager and all of my COM ports still appear there and say they are still assigned to FLEXRADIO but they don't show up in SMARTCAT. 

Is there a backup copy of the stuff from SmartCAT that is someplace I can bring back into operation?
In the past when I uninstalled SmartSDR and installed the latest version everything returned to normal. This has me scratching my head. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.  Mike K7DD

Bill -VA3WTB

Try opening the cat program, then at the bottom of the panel right click on remove button and reset VSP ports

Tim - W4TME

Here is what happened.  When you PC crashed, it corrupted the XML file that SmartCAT uses to define the port parameters it uses because it was not allowed to close gracefully.  The CAT ports you defined previously that are no longer shown in the CAT windows have for all intents an purposes have been lost.  When CAT restarted, it detected corrupted XML settings file a created a new default one with one CAT type port that uses a COM port and one that uses a TCP socket.

You have two choices.

Option 1 - reset you FlexVSP ports so that the ones you see in Device Manager that are not associated with the ports shown in the CAT display (called "orphaned ports") are deleted and then recreate your CAT ports.  This is easy to do.  Open SmartSDR CAT, place your mouse cursor over the REMOVE button and select the menu option Reset FlexVSP ports.  Now recreate your com ports.

Option 2 - you can open a HelpDesk support ticket and we can try to reassociate the FlexVSP ports that are orphaned in Device Manager with SmartSDR CAT by manually editing the CAT settings file.  This is not a complete recovery as if you had the ports associated with different slices or had set the CAT port parameter to something other than the defaults, we will not be able to recover those settings.

Really your best bet is Option 1.

The CAT settings file is located in %APPDATA%FlexRadio SystemsCAT.settings

Tim - W4TME

Doing that will mess up the FlexVSP com ports because it will not remove the associated registry entries properly.  You need to use the CAT application to create and delete the FlexVSP ports.

Michael Baker

OK. Well I was not the one who originally setup my system so I had software that was working with DDUTIL, CW Skimmer, FLDIGI, HRD, etc and now don't know exactly how it was setup. I DO have another computer (laptop) that was used with the rig for Field Day and it still has most of the original items still shown. Is there a way to locate the XML file and just copy it to a thumb drive and put it in the desktop PC?
Is there a way to create a backup of the setup so I don't do this again?

Michael Coslo

Oh, wow, if you are using a lot of different software but not knowing how it was set up, your best bet would be to sit down with your buddy and go through it all again. Take copious notes as well. If your system restore is bollixed, and it sounds like it is, after it is running again, make an image or clone of your hard drive, maybe with one of these:  https://windowsreport.com/clone-windows-10/   Windows 10 is experiencing some real issues right now, and having a drive with a clone image can save you a lot of grief. 

Tim - W4TME

Is there a way to create a backup of the setup so I don't do this again?

Yes, make a backup of the CAT.settings file I reference above.

VK2PW

Yep, I agree, the easiest and quickest restore method is to back them up, especially when it has a lot of settings and its tiresome to redo. %appdata%/FlexRadio Systems and make a copy of the three files and store elsewhere. When you make change to CAT, go in and copy them across again and no matter what goes awry, you will be back up in seconds not minutes or perhaps hours. de Adam VK2PW

John K3MA

I too have been hit a few times with having the CAT and DAX settings disappear after a computer glitch. Sometimes they were quite extensive and took a lot of time to recreate from scratch. I appreciate the direction to make a copy of the settings file so I can be proactive.

Just to be clear which three files should I be backing up to quickly undo the damage in the future? I assume all the ".setting" extension files but you know what the say about assuming.

Below is the contents of my C:/Users/John/AppData/Roaming/FlexRadio_Systems directory on the Windows 10 computer. My user name is "John" and this will be different on your computer unless of course you used the same user name as I did when you setup your account in the operating system.

For others following that cannot find this directory you need to unHide the AppData folder. While in File Explorer you can go to the top menu "View" and then select "Hidden Items" so that it gets displayed. Be careful not to change anything unless you understand what your doing and the results.

Additionally, as a future change Flex might consider providing a menu selection in SmartSDR to allow a one click Backup/Export of these other critical setting much like Profiles can be export. You might even include it as a selection in that utility much like you do for Memories.

John K3MA