Recovering from WDSc Errors

Hey, David:

I started using WebSphere Development Studio client (WDSc) a few months ago, and several times I caused it to crash. Twice now, a crash scrambled my Eclipse windows. The first time, I was able to get to the Eclipse update option off the help menu and the update fixed Eclipse. Yesterday, I accidentally double-clicked the WDSc icon in my startup tray and two copies of WDSc started running at once.

I shut down both copies and everything looked okay, but the next time I ran WDSc several windows were missing elements and contained empty frames with no data. One of those was the run dialog. There weren't any new updates to apply, so I reinstalled Eclipse. After a couple of hours, everything is back to normal, but I'm wondering if there is an error-recovery option.

--Brandon

Unfortunately, the corrupted workspaces in WDSc and Eclipse are fairly common. In most cases you can recover from WDSc errors without a full reinstall. Most errors are caused when the metadata that WDSc maintains about projects and the workspace becomes corrupted. If you manually delete the metadata, WDSc will rebuild it, which usually fixes the problem. The project information is stored in a file named .registry in your project workspace.

The following steps describe how to force WDSc to rebuild the .registry information:

1. If WDSc is running, shut it down.
   
   
2. Locate the .registry file in your workspace and move it to a temporary directory.
   
   
3. Restart WDSc.
   
   
4. If everything looks okay, delete the old registry from the temporary directory.

I have used these steps quite a few times to recover corrupted WDSc and Eclipse workspaces and haven't experienced any problems. The biggest drawback is that you will likely lose some customizations. This process will not fix every possible problem, but it is worth trying before a complete reinstall.

--David