Error: Not a valid civ Scenario file... (But it is)

[Bungus]

My computer crashed after dumping hours into a map revision. My scenario was saved regularly, but Now I'm getting this error whenever I try to load that biq file:

Error: Not a valid civ Scenario file.

Weird, cause it didn't crash when it was saving. Just happened to be open when the pc took a crap and not I guess the file is corrupted? Really weird because again, I wasn't writing to the harddrive I would think, as I wasnt in the proccess of saving.

Anyone know anyway to access all or part of the file? Tried File- import- Map data. Got error

tried Civ3 map tweaker figuring I could at least copy/paste all the map into an uncorrupted file, maybe. But of course the scenario is compressed, so maptweaker cant open it

Any one encounter this problem before or have any ideas? Would suck to lose 7 hours

 

[Civinator]

A search with that message text gave me 29 hits at CFC (many of them without answers). Mostly the wrong editor was used. You can post your biq here, so we can try if we can bring your biq 'back to life' again.

 

[Blue Monkey]

What editor were you using ? & had the file been opened in another editor before ?

 

[Bungus]

Cool, thanks guys. (Its zipped, been a minute since I uploaded, site doesn't like biqs)

Editor was the conquest1.22 civ3edit. My guess is the biq was somehow corrupted when my computer locked up and had to be restarted. But it wasn't in the midsts of saving so I don't understand how.

 

[Civinator]

Bungus, I tried to open the biq with the standard Civ 3, PTW and C3C editors - but without success. When I tried to open it with the Quintillus editor I triggered a complete freeze of my pc that even couldn´t be cured with the task manager. A check of the biq with the Kasperky antivirus program was negativ.

I´m sorry, but I think you must repeat the seven hours of work. At least my efforts had no success.

 

[Bungus]

Thanks for trying buddy. I even got a file recovery tool which supposedly found two earlier versions of the file, but same error with both of those.

The file is truly cursed.

So tonight I began reworking an earlier save of the scenario with a different name, which opened fine, but after swearing through a half hour or so of trying to remember exactly where I place all the maps resources, the pc froze again while dropping a desert tile. Im blaming russian hackers who didnt like the my resource distribution in the their country's facsimile. Havent checked yet, anticipating the same file corruption.
So in short, fudge this **** and Im done with this computer

 

[Bungus]

Thanks for trying buddy. I even got a file recovery tool which supposedly found two earlier versions of the file, but same error with both of those.

The file is truly cursed.

So tonight I began reworking an earlier save of the scenario with a different name, which opened fine, but after swearing through a half hour or so of trying to remember exactly where I place all the maps resources, the pc froze again while dropping a desert tile. Im blaming russian hackers who didnt like the my resource distribution in the their country's facsimile. Havent checked yet, anticipating the same file corruption.
So in short, fudge this **** and Im done with this computer

 

[Jorsalfare]

Unzipped and opened the biq-file you provided with an hexeditor. An inspection shows that every single byte in the file is zero (00 in hex). No wonder the various editors can't make any sense of it.

 

[Bungus]

fudging weird. And the file size is almost 100k. WTH did my computer do?

 

[Quintillus]

I see the same thing as Jorsalfare. While uncompressed file is 100 KB in size, and all zeros, the compressed one is only 273 bytes. It passes my anti-virus (ESET) as well, but sadly there's nothing that can be recovered from it.

 

[Bungus]

Damn. Well I appreciate the effort. Going to start again again on my my laptop steam version. I'll definitely check out your editor