Hi,

I have had a problem from time to time with different mIRC versions, but it is intermittent and I have no way to reproduce it consistently, nor any idea when or what sequence of events occurs to cause it. It may not even be a problem with mIRC itself.

The problem is this: Something happens, and mirc fails to completely write out an INI or script file (most often the corrupt file is mirc.ini, but it has corrupted other files at times). It gets chopped, and completely messes up mIRC's operation.

As I stated, I cannot reliably reproduce this bug (although I have read a thread on non-paged memory issues, and wonder if this is related..) However, I can give some generalized info on when I've noticed it most/least:
  • Any system crash, especially those which force a reboot often, but not always, have this problem.
  • It does seem to happen more often if mIRC has been running for long periods of time (I leave mIRC running almost 24/7.)
  • It rarely happens when totally "idle"--that is, when I sit in my private channel without anything happening to trigger any events and scripts (normal operation, like server ping-pongs do not seem to cause it). However, the act of starting or exiting mIRC has sometimes resulted in this happening.
  • When, where and what files it affects seems random, with mirc.ini seeming to get hit the most. At times, it even affects files which (as far as I know) never should have or needed an update/write (no changed settings, no scripts running which wrote anything to disk, etc.)
  • I have noticed this problem for the last few versions (at least since version 4.x, when I switched to mIRC). I have just upgraded to 6.3, so I do not yet know if it continues to have this problem.
  • Likewise, the OS, hardware, drivers, etc, do not seem to have any effect either way. I have seen this problem occur on different computers, with different configurations, drivers and OSes.
  • I even went so far as to write a batch file that makes a backup of all changed files prior to starting mIRC, and again after it exits; as well as used a file-change notification utility to log when any file in the mIRC folder (and it's subs) gets modified. As this has worked well for me, perhaps mIRC could do something similar.. (IE, make a backup of any files it changes/writes to, and perhaps even keep a "journal" of changes from the point of backup, to help track through changes made to see when the problem occurs.)
  • I have tried a few things try to reproduce the problem; even forcing a system crash/reboot, hitting the reset button, etc. The problem has never occurred during any of those tests; It seems to only happen sometimes when those events occur on their own.

Please let me know if I can provide any further help or info.

Cas