RealGUIDE displays the message ‘Study could not be loaded’ and I can no longer see my patients. How can I fix this?

When the "Cannot load studies, XML error" message appears, it means that the patients' database has been corrupted. It can happen for different reasons: strange CT import, power interruption during import, etc.

If you have installed RealGUIDE 5.4.2 or later, you may be able to restore the database (attached are screenshots showing each step):

1. run RealGUIDE and click on "Settings" icon on the patients' list
2. click on "Show settings folder". The directory with RG settings files will appear
3. click on "Roaming" in the folder path box on the top of the window
4. in the "Roaming" folder, click on "RealGUIDE50-DB". This is the folder that holds all local patients;
5. in “RealGUIDE50-DB”, you will see a “Storage” folder, a list of “.xml” files that are likely to be 0 KB (meaning they are corrupted), and a “backup” folder containing “.xml.bak” files

If these ".xml.bak" are present (These are only available if the database corruption occurred on RG 5.4.2 or later version), you can:

1. copy all the “.xml.bak” files in the “backup” folder and paste them into the “RealGUIDE50-DB” folder
2. completely delete the 0 KB “.xml” files still present in “RealGUIDE50-DB”
3. remove the “.bak” extension from the “.xml.bak” files

This procedure will restore the DB before the corruption. Please, remember to remove the last patient you tried to import, because it was likely the one that caused the problem and may cause it again.

If the ".xml.bak" files are not available, then unfortunately it is not possible to restore the database. In this case, all you can do is:

1. copy the "Storage" folder on an external hard drive, as backup (I recommend this to avoid taking up too much space on the C drive, which does not have much remaining capacity, especially if the DB is large). This step can take a lot of time, depending on the DB size
2. after the patients' database backup folder has been created, run RealGUIDE and click on "Settings" icon on the patients' list
3. click on "Database" tab, then click on "Empty database". This will completely remove all the files from the corrupted "RealGUIDE50-DB" and make it usable again. It is very important to verify that the patients' DB has been copied correctly before clicking on "Empty database"
4. now the you can manually import the needed cases from the backup DB folder you saved on your hard disk.

NB: when the database is very large, it may be safer to move completed cases to a folder for archiving and delete them from the local disk.