Error Message at Startup - Pt2000

[PeacheyKing]

Trying to open Peachtree2000 today and got an error message "Error Reading General File for Module 4". Everything seemed fine at close yesterday and have had no luck opening today. Stand-alone machine. Cannot find company or drive that Peachtree is on...it is looking for non-existent network. Help!!! Thanks!!!

[Deborah Bean]

Have you tried re-installing the program? That usually fixes these type of problems. Don't forget to install the updates again too.

[jag]

What OS are you running? If you are running Windows NT, 2000 or XP make sure you have adminstrative privileges. And you are authorized to access the data directory.

As Deborah said, try to install Peachtree 2000 again. The company data will not be erased, but you got to tell the program the data path when you run it again for the first time.

If you are sure is a Hard Drive/Windows/Data Corruption Error your only option is to restore from a previous backup. I recomend to Scandisk + Defrag the drive first.

Also, if you are using Peachtree 2000 (not 2002) you should post in the PT2000 forum.

[Robert Walraven]

The error message means that Peachtree cannot read record 4 of the GENERAL.DAT file. On startup this is one of the first things Peachtree does and it will not proceed if it cannot read this record.

There are two possibilities: 1) your database is currently not accessable on the network, and 2) the GENERAL.DAT file got clobbered. If you can't see the company folder and the GENERAL.DAT file in it (say with Windows Explorer), then you have some network problem you need to resolve.

On the otherhand, if you can see GENERAL.DAT, then you will need to fix it. Back up the original file and extract a copy from your last good backup. The PTB is actually a zip file so you can use a tool like WinZip to extract GENERAL.DAT. The backed up version will have slightly different data in it but this should have only minor side effects. The file contains mostly default data but you may find that things like the next invoice number will have been set back to an earlier value.

If this works, then hold your breath. Corruption of GENERAL.DAT is sometimes accompanied by damage to other files too. Exercise Peachtree to be sure you can access all your data.