Photo Manager Deluxe Hangs on Startup - Can I Purge Database?

Pieter-Muller wrote on 2/2/2024, 12:18 AM

I'm using Photo Manager 13.1.1.12 (edited typo)

It worked fine for a long time. However, it now hangs on start up and becomes unresponsive, never taking any input at all.

Task Manager shows Firebird SQL Server - MAGIX Edition (32 bit) taking a lot of Disk usage and a consistent load of CPU.

This goes on for more than an hour (at which point I gave up).

I uninstalled both Photo Manager and Firebird and reinstalled them, however, I get the exact same issue after reinstallation.

I'm pretty desperate to get this working again, even if I have to rebuild the database.

Is there a way to completely delete the database that Firebird is trying to read, _without_ launching Photo Manager (since I can't get it to launch).

Machine info:
Processor   AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor 3.70 GHz
Installed RAM   16.0 GB
System type   64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

OS info:

Edition   Windows 10 Home
Version   22H2
Installed on   ‎13/‎09/‎2020
OS build   19045.3930
Experience   Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19053.1000.0

Comments

emmrecs wrote on 2/2/2024, 5:39 AM

@Pieter-Muller

Welcome to the Magix user to user forums.

First, you say you have version 3. Did you mean version 13, which is the latest?

Your post about the database piqued my curiosity and I attempted to do some research about this on my own machine.

Please take the following as my guesswork (based on what I see in the specific file when opened in Notepad++) but I believe the database file is named MAGIX.FDB located in C:\ProgramData\MAGIX\Common\Database. As with the majority of Magix programs, this would almost certainly have been created on the first run of the program so the installer log would not know it existed, hence your uninstall of the program would not remove it.

However, before you do anything else at the very least create a System Restore point or, better still if you can, create a backup image of the whole of your C:\ drive. You will then have the option to restore your computer to what it was before you attempted any changes, should that be needed!

Then, as a suggestion, try moving that file to a different location on your computer and then try again to launch PM.

PLEASE DO ANY OF THIS WITH EXTREME CAUTION!!

I have somewhere around 20,000 image and video files on my computer but the program and database do not take anything like an hour to load; rather it is usually a few seconds. However, as I write this the database is being updated in PM and this has been going on for something like 30 minutes and is currently just over half-way through! But that updating does NOT prevent the program opening.

Also, I do see that the file I indicated above, MAGIX.FDB is being updated and written to as the database update is happening. So I think this is the file that is the problem for you.

HTH

Jeff
Forum Moderator

Pieter-Muller wrote on 2/2/2024, 5:45 AM

Thanks Jeff

> First, you say you have version 3. Did you mean version 13, which is the latest?

Yes that's a typo, sorry about that - I did mean 13.

Thanks for the location of the DB file - I moved it out and the application started without any issues - I am rebuilding the DB now and will see how it goes when that is done.

The old file was 20GB (about 120k images) - that is large but should be manageable on an SSD.

emmrecs wrote on 2/2/2024, 6:01 AM

@Pieter-Muller

Excellent News! Glad to hear that worked for you!

As to the problem of the file size; PM and the Firebird SQL Server are both 32 bit programs and so file size is limited by that.

Jeff