+RheS Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 Occasionally, I get a PQ emailed which has a faulty ZIP file in it. I'm not sure what to blame... but it's annoying. It happened today on the "My Finds" PQ, which is particularly annoying since I can't request that one again for a week. I don't know if the file is being truncated, or otherwise mangled. I can see that it starts with the "PK" bytes that probably identify a ZIP file, but otherwise I know nothing about the internal formst. I'd be happy to send copies of the bad file to someone who does... or to have pointers to ZIP file structure so that I could research this further, with the hopes of identifying a cause. Since there is nobody else complaining about this (although with search down, I can't be sure of that... but I did look...), it seems quite possible that it's happening to the email on its way to me. But not very often. Suggestions? Link to comment
+fizzymagic Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 I have been receiving PQs since they first came out, and I have never had a corrupted one. The problem is almost certainly either with your email provider or with something on your computer. There are some freeware utilities out there that can attempt to fix corrupted ZIP files. You might try one of those. Do a Google search on "fix corrupted zip" and you will see them. Link to comment
Deego Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 Like fizzy said, I have been having PQ's for 3 years and never had a corrupt one. Just a shot in the dark , Do you have a virus checker running on your emails ?? is this set to scan zip files?? I have seen unziped Pq's causing virus hits. Link to comment
+Prime Suspect Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 Occasionally, I get a PQ emailed which has a faulty ZIP file in it. I'm not sure what to blame... but it's annoying. It happened today on the "My Finds" PQ, which is particularly annoying since I can't request that one again for a week. As others have said, the problem is most likey beyond GC's control. It's getting mangled or truncated somewhere in transit. Do you use dial-up? Link to comment
+horsegeeks Posted December 20, 2005 Share Posted December 20, 2005 I got the corrupted zips for a short time last month. They cleared up after a few days and I haven't had any since. Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 Like fizzy said, I have been having PQ's for 3 years and never had a corrupt one. Just a shot in the dark , Do you have a virus checker running on your emails ?? is this set to scan zip files?? I have seen unziped Pq's causing virus hits. I've been getting PQs for 5 years and I just got a corrupted My Finds PQ zip file. And like RHes said, I must wait another week to get the PQ results. Bummer. Link to comment
+Harriet the Spy Posted February 25, 2007 Share Posted February 25, 2007 I have had a couple of corrupted pq files. They were corrupted on my end. I just deleted the file that I downloaded and redownloaded it from the email. They were just fine after that. Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 I have had a couple of corrupted pq files. They were corrupted on my end. I just deleted the file that I downloaded and redownloaded it from the email. They were just fine after that. Re-downloading did not fix the problem for me. They were corrupted in the email. Link to comment
+LSUMonica Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 I've been receiving PQs for almost 3 years now. In the first few months I would get corrupted PQs quite often (1-2) a month. Sometimes the PQs would not even open, then others would load into GSAK but would have corrupted data, i.e. pointing to other caches, logs from other caches, etc. Howevery they have been fine for almost 2 years now. (Hope I am not jinxing myself!) Don't let anyone tell you that it has never happened. I would even provide examples from 2 years ago but I just cleaned out my gmail account last week. Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 Like fizzy said, I have been having PQ's for 3 years and never had a corrupt one. Just a shot in the dark , Do you have a virus checker running on your emails ?? is this set to scan zip files?? I have seen unziped Pq's causing virus hits. I've been getting PQs for 5 years and I just got a corrupted My Finds PQ zip file. And like RHes said, I must wait another week to get the PQ results. Bummer. I did another all-finds PQ and it was corrupt again. That's two in a row. Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 Like fizzy said, I have been having PQ's for 3 years and never had a corrupt one. Just a shot in the dark , Do you have a virus checker running on your emails ?? is this set to scan zip files?? I have seen unziped Pq's causing virus hits. I've been getting PQs for 5 years and I just got a corrupted My Finds PQ zip file. And like RHes said, I must wait another week to get the PQ results. Bummer. I did another all-finds PQ and it was corrupt again. That's two in a row. I should add that my regular PQs are not corrupt, just the all-finds. Link to comment
+Cheminer Will Posted March 10, 2007 Share Posted March 10, 2007 I will very occasionally get a corrupted PQ. It has never been the My Finds PQ, so I just re-run it and it sends a good one. Probably one in 50 or 60 at most are corrupt. I think it is just something that happens occasionally. Not a big deal for me. I am always amazed at all the technology that works as it was designed as much as it does. Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 Well, I just requested my next All-Finds PQ. We'll see if there are 3 corruptions in a row. Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted March 20, 2007 Share Posted March 20, 2007 Well, I just requested my next All-Finds PQ. We'll see if there are 3 corruptions in a row. Yep. Third time's a charm. All-finds PQ is corrupt again. I guess I'll give up on it. Link to comment
AZcachemeister Posted March 21, 2007 Share Posted March 21, 2007 Are you unable to unzip it, or is GSAK having problems with it? I recently had an issue with GSAK rejecting a particular query because of 'bad .xml'. Somehow, a cacher's log got some weird characters in it, that showed up as ASCII boxes on the cache page. I was able to get the log changed, and now everything is fine with that PQ. Since the 'My Finds' PQ only has your logs in it, you might want to check all your logs manually (a pain, I know!) and edit the trouble-maker (if this scenario fits what you are experiencing). Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted March 21, 2007 Share Posted March 21, 2007 Are you unable to unzip it, or is GSAK having problems with it? I recently had an issue with GSAK rejecting a particular query because of 'bad .xml'. Somehow, a cacher's log got some weird characters in it, that showed up as ASCII boxes on the cache page. I was able to get the log changed, and now everything is fine with that PQ. Since the 'My Finds' PQ only has your logs in it, you might want to check all your logs manually (a pain, I know!) and edit the trouble-maker (if this scenario fits what you are experiencing). I am unable to open the zip file contained in the email. I'm not using GSAK. Is there a way to determine the specific reason a zip file is corrupt? Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted March 23, 2007 Share Posted March 23, 2007 Are you unable to unzip it, or is GSAK having problems with it? I recently had an issue with GSAK rejecting a particular query because of 'bad .xml'. Somehow, a cacher's log got some weird characters in it, that showed up as ASCII boxes on the cache page. I was able to get the log changed, and now everything is fine with that PQ. Since the 'My Finds' PQ only has your logs in it, you might want to check all your logs manually (a pain, I know!) and edit the trouble-maker (if this scenario fits what you are experiencing). I am unable to open the zip file contained in the email. I'm not using GSAK. Is there a way to determine the specific reason a zip file is corrupt? I'll give it one more shot. I changed my email address. If it comes in at my new email address uncorrupted, I'll assume it got scrambled at my ISP somehow. Is it possible that there is a corruption in a log that's creating a corrupt zip file? Link to comment
crawil Posted March 23, 2007 Share Posted March 23, 2007 I use a google account for all geocaching emails, but the "My Finds" PQ gets corrupted, so I change the default email to yahoo, run the "My Finds" PQ - it actually shows up in a decent interval - and then switch it back to google. It's tedious, but it actually works! Link to comment
CacheMonkeez Posted March 28, 2007 Share Posted March 28, 2007 I use a google account for all geocaching emails, but the "My Finds" PQ gets corrupted, so I change the default email to yahoo, run the "My Finds" PQ - it actually shows up in a decent interval - and then switch it back to google. It's tedious, but it actually works! Very interesting. For some reason, my yahoo account never receives gc.com emails. So I had to switch emails to my earthlink account. Link to comment
+x-sighted Posted April 22, 2007 Share Posted April 22, 2007 I have a pocket query problem too. I also have a problem with saved pq's sometimes not coming through after I turn them on. I have never had a corrupted regular pq zip file emailed to me. More importantly when I put the my finds query in queue I get it almost immediately, but instead of two files coming as I am told is supposed to happen, I just get one file. I use this to upload statistics in "It's Not About the Numbers" It doesn't always happen that way, but enough that it is a pain in the neck. Before you ask if I unzip the file or change it's name before sending to INATN. I do not unzip or change the name of the zip file I receive in the email. Only after I cannot upload the zip file do I try different things. That is when I found that when unzipped, only one file is there. INATN says there should be two. Thanks for any help on solving this. Link to comment
+Ken220 Posted April 23, 2007 Share Posted April 23, 2007 I, too, have had problems recently with a pq being corrupt. It has occurred three times in the last few weeks. I bought a new computer in February but didn't notice the problem then. All the corrupt files have occurred in April. Once I requested two pq's and one was fine but the other was corrupt. I found that to be strange. I requested the pq again the next day and it came through fine. I'm not sure if it's on my end or is something happening in transit. Link to comment
+Miragee Posted April 23, 2007 Share Posted April 23, 2007 Hmmm . . . I don't think I have ever gotten a corrupted PQ. I used to use Yahoo!. Now, for well over a year, I use my ISP email address. The only time I have gotten a "corrupt" PQ message in GSAK is if I accidentally try to open a PQ before it has completely downloaded (slow . . . dial . . . up . . . ). Link to comment
+x-sighted Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Okay. I have been contact with the people at Groundspeak and the people at Itsnotaboutthenumbers. The people at Groundspeak say that the only time you get two files when you unzip the My Finds Query is when at least one of the caches has additional waypoints. I didn't know that. The people at ITNATN confirmed that. Here is a cut and paste of their response. Yep... as the response said, you'll only > have the second file if you've found a cache with extra > waypoints. All is not lost, however... > > Simply open up your text editor and create a blank file. Save it as > "796427-wpts.gpx". Zip that file along with the "796427.gpx" back into > the "796427.zip" file and the upload should work. Once you find a cache > with extra waypoints you'll never have to do this workaround again. I did as suggested by the INATN people and it worked. This info helps my problem of being able to put the stats on my profile page using Itsnotaboutthenumbers.com I don't know if it will help anyone else with their problems. Link to comment
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