DDF Error Caused by Missing File(s)

DDF Error Caused by Missing File(s)

Released: 3/2/2026
Elliott Version: v8.5 and higher

Background

An administrator tried to set up a new company by copying the contents of the Company 01 data folder (<RootPath>\DATA) to a new Company data folder (<RootPath>\DATA_90).  Most of the files were copied, but a few were busy and so were not copied to the new Company 90 folder.

When the administrator launched Elliott Control Center, the new Company appeared, but when it was clicked a message like the following appeared:


This message indicated that NSCTLFIL.BTR was not found and therefore was created.  However, the shared memory for the DDF files was not yet established, so NSCTLFIL.BTR was created in a non SQL-compliant way.  In this case, the control file that contains settings for permissions and company-wide options was initialized and therefore not consistent with the other database files for Company 90.

Subsequently, a task launched from the Control Center failed with this message:


So, starting the Control Center and launching a task provided two clues that something was clearly wrong with the database files for Company 90.  A recovery procedure was required to fix this problem.

Recovery Procedure

At this point, the only safe thing to do is to copy all the files from the source Company folder to the target Company folder and make sure all files are copied this time.  After copying all the files, you should be able to run Elliott against the new Company without these issues.

JEG

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