DT Personal will not open

My Devonthink Personal will not open today. It only opens the Welcome screen. Tools restore is greyed out.

I’ve emailed support but not expecting a quick reply so thought I would ask here for help. I’ve looked in the Help Files and it says… see below… but I don’t understand where I am supposed to copy the backup to, and what is meant by the top level folder.

I have restarted the computer and installed a fresh .dmg but nothing has changed. This is most frustrating.

Cynthi

"
DEVONTHINK PERSONAL CRASHES WHEN OPENED
If a database is heavily damaged it can happen that DEVONthink Personal crashed
when opening the database or when starting up. In this case you cannot use the
build-in mechanisms for recovering your data. But you can go back to one of the
internal backups manually. With its factory setting, DEVONthink Personal keeps up
to two copies of the index files in case that the index is damaged beyond repair. You
can change when and how many internal backups DEVONthink Personal keeps in
the Preferences, Backup tab.
To revert to one of the internal backups, quit DEVONthink Personal, then locate the
database folder (~/Application Support/DEVONthink 2) in the Finder. Inside you will
find one or more folders named ‘Backup(.x)’. They contain copies of the index files
(named ‘*.dtMeta’). To manually revert to one of the backups, copy the content of
the backup folder (means: all ‘.dtMeta’ files) to the top level of the database folder,
replacing the existing, defective files."

Do you still use the trial? Then you could request a demo license in case that you’re running out of trial time.

If that’s not the case - has been anything logged to the system console (see Applications > Utilites > Console.app), is the database marked as read-only in File > Database Properties?

No, my DTP is registered.

I’ve looked where you mention, but when I go to File there is no Database Properties This is after going to…

If that’s not the case - has been anything logged to the system console (see Applications > Utilites > Console.app), is the database marked as read-only in File > Database Properties?

There’s no such menu item or it’s not enabled? Anything in the console after launching DEVONthink?

22/04/2011 11:41:19 Help Viewer[1335] Error trying to read /Users/Cynthia/Library/Caches/com.apple.helpui/Console Help/ConsoleHelp.helpindex.temporary: *** -initForReadingWithData: nil argument

The above is what it says in the console.

It says the above.

There is Database Properties under the File Menu of DT, but it is greyed out.

Is the menu item DEVONthink > License… enabled and is there a valid license? Or are you able to launch DEVONthink successfully after renaming the folder ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 2?

Yes just checked my licence is enabled.

Did you try to rename the folder? You could also try to delete the preferences (~/Library/Preferences/com.devon-technologies.think2.plist) while DEVONthink isn’t running.

No I didn’ t try to rename the folder, as you said is it licenced OR do this, so when it was licenced I just let you know.

Anyway SUCCESS I moved ~/Library/Preferences/com.devon-technologies.think2.plis to Trash and its working again.

Thank you so much for all your help. I really appreciate it, as I think DT is good.

Cynthia