topic Re: Invalid File in AutoCAD Forum

Invalid File error when Opening DWG in AutoCAD

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 20:42:55 GMT

My files say invalid file whenever I try to open them in AutoCad or TrueViewer. I've tried inserting the file into a blank drawing, downloading the file to another source, converting the backup file to a drawing file, and I've tried converting the backup file into a dxf and opening in trueviewer to convert back to a dwg. Nothing has worked. Has anyone had a similar problem and been able to fix it?

@Anonymous,

john.vellek has edited your subject line for clarity: Invalid File

Re: Invalid File error when Opening DWG in AutoCAD

Alfred.NESWADBA — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 20:43:30 GMT

Hi,

the only thing I saw where antivirus software or so called "make me fast" tools which kills files.

But most important: When you start AutoCAD, open such a dwg-file then ... what does AutoCAD tell you about that file? What happens then, any error message (please show a screenshot), or does AutoCAD crash (please show a screenshot of the exception message).

When you create a new drawing, draw a line, save that now to your local disk ... do you get any message that it can't save? If not, can you then open this file?

But I have some questions:

>> tried converting the backup file into a dxf

How did you try that? When you can't open the original dwg-file how would anything be able to convert this to dxf?

Can you upload one or 2 of the dwg-files you have and you can't open?

Also please let us know which version and update of AutoCAD you are using (please start command _ABOUT and create a screenshot from that dialog).

- alfred -

Re: Invalid File error when Opening DWG in AutoCAD

pendean — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 20:43:47 GMT

Open Windows Notepad
Drag and drop one of your DWG file onto that open window.

Does the topmost line have any words (and what do they say) or is it all garbage? The latter means your file is toast.

Repeat for all other files you are trying to salvage (BAK, SV$ etc.).

Re: Invalid File error when Opening DWG in AutoCAD

john.vellek — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 20:44:04 GMT

HI @Anonymous,

There are some applications (utilities) that might corrupt your files or you might have some disk errors. Is it possible to Zip up some files and share so I can test?

If your data needs to be private or confidential, please email it directly to me at john.vellek@autodesk.com and please include a link to this thread in your email.

Re: Invalid File error when Opening DWG in AutoCAD

jggerth — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 21:34:52 GMT

You can try downloading a trial of BricsCAD (or Ares Commander), and see if that will open the file. It's usually moch more forgiving of DWG file problems.

Re: Invalid File

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 02:52:07 GMT

All the files say nul over and over...I'm assuming that means my files are
goners?

Re: Invalid File

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 03:20:07 GMT

When I try to open the file it says 'drawing file is not valid'. When I
tried using trueviewer it said 'FATAL ERROR:Unhandled Access Violation
Reading 0x008 Exception at E776476h'. Autocad doesn't crash it just can't
open the file.
I can save new files, no error messages there, but when I try to open them
they won't open.
For the dxf conversion I just changed the file name from .bak to .dxf and
then tried to open the dxf.
Thanks for the help!

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 9:06 PM Kaitlin Weishaar
wrote:

> When I try to open the file it says 'drawing file is not valid'. When I
> tried using trueviewer it said 'FATAL ERROR:Unhandled Access Violation
> Reading 0x008 Exception at E776476h'. Autocad doesn't crash it just can't
> open the file.
> I can save new files, no error messages there, but when I try to open them
> they won't open.
> For the dxf conversion I just changed the file name from .bak to .dxf and
> then tried to open the dxf.
> Thanks for the help!

Re: Invalid File

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 03:21:07 GMT

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 9:09 PM Kaitlin Weishaar
wrote:

>
>

Re: Invalid File

Alfred.NESWADBA — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 05:36:34 GMT

Hi,

>> All the files say nul over and over...I'm assuming that means

>> my files are gone

In that case yes, sorry, they can't be repaired.

The only thing you can do is to search through your backups to find a state when they were not wiped out.

Sorry, - alfred -