Dealing with "Not a database file" error

The "Not a database file" message indicates some form of DBF header problem. The problem can be simple or severe. The most common source of this error message for FoxPro users is an incorrect record count in the file header due to an abortive shutdown while the file was open. FoxPro (versions up to but not including Visual FoxPro) checks this count when attempting to open the file and will refuse to open it if the header count is too high. This is a simple form of header problem that dSALVAGE can remedy automatically with a single keystroke. This problem will not occur with Visual FoxPro that doesn't care whether the count is correct or not when opening the file.

Aside from this simple form of damage, header corruption can be more severe such that the structural information concerning the file has been lost. In this case dSALVAGE offers the ability to replace the header in one of several ways. If you have an older copy of the file available to be used as a donor, dSALVAGE will read the header information from this donor file and will merge it with the data from the damaged file to create a healthy output file. It does not matter how many records exist in the donor file (even zero records is OK) since dSALVAGE will properly update the record count in the repaired file automatically. If a donor file is not available for the header information, dSALVAGE provides a header builder that will construct a new header from the data in the damaged file.

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