Topic: WeatherLink Problem with Browse Window

[George Richardson]

Hello,
I hope someone has had, solved, and will share the solution to the following problem. I have been running WeatherLink for over 10 years. Within the past week, when I open the Browse window, the only data shown is the date and time.
Well, there are more problems. When I try to open the strip charts, I get an "encountered a problem and must close" message.
The rain database seems OK, and the Weather Bulletin seem OK.
Thoughts, Ideas?
TIA
George

[Bushman]

Make  a backup copy then run disk diagnostics (CHKDSK etc.)  When I ran WL I used to find errors that caused WL to hiccup.  Usually creating a new station nd copying over the previous  data files did the trick.  YMMV

[dalecoy]

Look at the names and dates on the .wlk files.  Make backup copies, and delete ones that look strange - especially the most recent one (December 2016 name). 

Let us know if this and Busshman's instructions don't fix the problem. 

[johnd]

Try this first:

Close the Weatherlink program;

Locate the files DataLists.dat and DataSets.dat within the WL station subfolder using the Windows file manager such as My Computer;

Delete one or both of these files or, if you prefer and wish to be more cautious, simply rename them e.g. by adding a .old suffix to the end of the filenames to e.g. DataLists.dat.old (which would allow recovery of the original files if required);

Restart Weatherlink and retry;

[George Richardson]

Bushman, thanks for the suggestion. Tried it and no joy.

dalecoy, been there, done that. No help. (that's usually the situation though)

johnd ding, Ding, DING! And we have a winner. I've never heard of that one but I'll remember it. Worked like a charm. Thank you so much.

Thanks everyone.

George

[dalecoy]

johnd ding, Ding, DING! And we have a winner. I've never heard of that one but I'll remember it. Worked like a charm. Thank you so much.

That's why I said to tell us if the other things didn't work - my personal preference is to look at file problems first, before trying those deletions, but "whatever works".

Deletion of DataLists.dat and DataSets.dat is detailed in several other topics in this forum.   

And of course, johnd has more practical experience with these problems than the rest of us!   

[johnd]

That's why I said to tell us if the other things didn't work - my personal preference is to look at file problems first, before trying those deletions, but "whatever works".

The particular symptoms reported by the OP did strongly point to a datasets/datalists issue rather than a 'database' corruption. But I agree that for archive download issues (which this wasn't) or other vaguer data issues then file corruption is a good place to start.

[dalecoy]

The particular symptoms reported by the OP did strongly point to a datasets/datalists issue rather than a 'database' corruption. But I agree that for archive download issues (which this wasn't) or other vaguer data issues then file corruption is a good place to start.

Aha!  I understand, and see the difference.  Thanks for adding to our collective knowledge.

[George Richardson]

Hello again.

To expand upon this episode,which is now fixed, I'll try a rather detailed response.

About the only parts of WL I use are "Browse the rain database" and "Browse the station data". About a week ago, I noticed the Browse station data window was not functioning properly. I then checked the rain database and found 2 future years listed which I deleted from the record. Next I tried the bulletin, which I virtually never use, and it seemed OK. Next I tried the strip charts which crashed WL. At this point, I entertained the idea of running chkdsk but decided to post on this forum first. Shortly after my post, Bushman suggested running chkdsk which I did but it was not helpful.

A couple of hours later I rechecked this thread and found dalecoy's post, which was the first action I took when the problem arose, and johnd's post which provided a solution which had been covered in previous posts which, since I have read every post on this board, I had read but did not recall.

One last thing that may be of some interest. I renamed the datasets/datalists files as suggested and after the program recreated working files and the problems went away, I opened each ".old" file in notepad and they were empty but did not show as 0 length files. Who knows.

At this point I acknowledged each post with the result.

Again, thank you all.

George

[WheatonRon]

Hello again.

...
 Next I tried the bulletin, which I virtually never use, and it seemed OK. Next I tried the strip charts which crashed WL. At this point, I entertained the idea of running chkdsk but decided to post on this forum first. Shortly after my post, Bushman suggested running chkdsk which I did but it was not helpful.

...

Again, thank you all.

George

Unrelated to this problem, I was surprised at George's statement re rarely using the Bulletin in WL. I leave that on and open all the time! Reason? Davis support told me years ago, when inquiring about my rainfall not properly showing up on my CWOP page, to leave the Bulletin open and on all the time. That fixed the issue whereby rainfall since midnight and the last 24 hours is properly displayed on my CWOP page. I am using WL 6.0.3. Anybody else doing this too?

[CW2274]

My Bulletin runs 24/7, but I use it as my "console", didn't know about the other stuff.

[Randall Kayfes]

Agreed, leave the bulletin running 24/7... I was told it would solve the Wunderground not reporting  accurate Wind Gust information. It helped a little my gust info is still low on WU.

Randall