Beyond Compare crashed and vanished

[michaeldinowitz]

I was running a current edition of Beyond Compare when it suddenly disappeared from my screen and the BCompare.exe file is now missing from its directory. Has anyone seen this or might know what happened?

[Chris]

We haven't seen the behavior you describe before, but I'd be suspicious of your antivirus software. It's possible real-time virus scanning had a false positive hit on Beyond Compare and it was deleted or quarantined. Reviewing your antivirus logs might help diagnose the issue.

[michaeldinowitz]

It turns out that the security people installed Sentinel One and it blocked Beyond Compare. They say they've rolled it back but I still don't see the .exe in the directory. Will reinstalling damage/kill my open tabs and settings?
Thanks

[Chris]

Settings are stored separately from the program in "%appdata%\scooter software\beyond compare 4". An uninstall won't clear your settings unless you check the box (unchecked by default) to remove settings during the uninstall. To fix your installation, run Beyond Compare 4's installer, then select Upgrade as the install type.

[michaeldinowitz]

I ran the 64bit msi and it installed without any questions. The only thing missing is my tab history. When you select new tab it shows you all of the tabs you've had in the last few days/weeks. Mine is gone. This includes my default settings for a folder compare and all.

[Chris]

Is it possible the security software deleted your settings files or the settings were corrupted when the security software deleted Beyond Compare?

Settings are stored as XML in "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Scooter Software\Beyond Compare 4". Running the installer shouldn't affect files in that folder.

[michaeldinowitz]

Probably corrupted them and opening/closing the program caused the backups to take the current values rather than the ones from before the corruption.

[Aaron]

If the originals were corrupted, launching would detect that and roll back to the backup versions (also in the same directory). If they deleted all the .xmls, then there'd be nothing to look at/for, so launching BC4 regenerates them.

If your IT department has any backups, they could look in this folder from a couple days ago to help you restore your settings. Going forward, you can also manually back up your settings with the Tools menu -> Export wizard.

I'd suggest they contact Sentinel One support to inform them about what happened. Deleting plain text (.xmls) in a user's %AppData% is extremely aggressive, and they might have configured something incorrectly.

[bishnugupta]

Hi Chris and Aaron, today I completed the pending updates on my Win 10 PC now as I open BC4 it loads fine but gradually a few sec later crashes itself. Any idea how to fix it?

[bishnugupta]

The issue is replicable hence I've managed to collect the error log files, where am I supposed to send them?

Thanks in advance...

Edit: Uninstalling the old application and reinstalling BC4 4.2.4 seem to have fixed the issue

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Bishnu Gupta
Showbox Mobdro Tutuapp

[Aaron]

Hello,

You can email us at [email protected]
Please include a link back to this forum thread for our reference.

You can also include your BCSupport.zip from the Help menu -> Support dialog; Export.