Critical error: unable to save to the local cache

[Rui]

On opening a section in OneNote2007 got a message stating that it was
corrupt. Tried to repair it. Got a message stating that the repair was
successful, immediatelt followed by a more serious looking message, that goes
like this:

Critical error: unable to save to the local cache file for an unknown
reason(...). One Note will now exit.

Running a Toshiba Tecra M4 TabletPC, 1.5 GB RAM, 20 GB free disk space.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

If you close and reopen OneNote, what happens to that section?
Did it ask you to send something to Microsoft, and if yes, did you send
it? (if not, please always do in the future)

In most cases this is actually not a problem. I would bet that your data
is still there (in the state the repair put it in) and OneNote working
fine. The Beta is very aggressive in reporting errors. Microsoft is
collecting data with the beta to know when problems occur and make sure
they won't happen. So in many cases, OneNote thinks there *might* be an
error where in fact there is probably none.

If you actually experience ANY data loss due to that error message, go
on Connect and file a bug report and also post here.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rui]

I'm inclined to agree with you on the data loss issue, cause I can see the
last thing I added to the section, sometimes.
The problem is that OneNote just doesn't run any longer, with this section
or any other, since it shows the described "unable to save to local cache"
error message after less than a minute.

I've filled a bug report on Connect, cause this is something that stops the
app from running altogether.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Is this happening on machine that has the notebooks locally or not?

 

[Rui]

Yes, the notebooks are local.

Is this happening on machine that has the notebooks locally or not?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Do you have space free on the harddrive that has the Documents and
Settings folder?
Run chkdsk on your harddrive and see if there are any errors.

If the error still appears:
While OneNote is closed, go to the following folder with Windows
Explorer:
Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\OneNote\12.0
In that folder, you should have a file called
OneNoteOfflineCache.onecache
Rename the file into something else (you choose). Open OneNote again. It
should now completely rebuild the cache and you shouldn't get the error
message anymore. If it works fine, you can delete the file that you
renamed the cache to.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rui]

Hi Patrick,

I do have about 20 GB and, suspecting a disk issue, I had ran chkdsk before
and there were no errors.

So I went ahead and renamed the file OneNoteOfflineCache.onecache. It was
about 4.6 GB in size. Once renamed, I started OneNote. This time no errors
occurred and OneNote is behaving as before.

Thx a lot for your help, Patrick. I saw someone who had posted at Connect
with a similar problem. I will post your advice to help him too.

Regards

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Rui,

I'll post it myself. There is a little catch with this workaround that I
didn't mention (as it didn't impact you)

Patrick

 

[Rui]

Well can you tell me about the catch ?

This offline cache file grows quite fast. It has already grown to 1.2 GB...

Rui

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Just posted the workaround to your bug report as well. The catch is that
if you do this on a cache file that is not local, you will lose all
changes made since the notebooks were last synced. This isn't an issue
with local notebooks as the changes are synced right away.
Take a look at how big your OneNote notebooks folder is. The cache
should become about equal in size to that folder.

Patrick

 

[Rui]

Ok, got it. You're help was very valuable, thx a lot.

The work done with the new OneNote version is very good too. This is
probably the most exciting app on my TablePC right now. I just love it.

Thx again.

Regards

 

[Daniel Escapa [MS]]

Thank you Patrick

Ok, got it. You're help was very valuable, thx a lot.

The work done with the new OneNote version is very good too. This is
probably the most exciting app on my TablePC right now. I just love it.

Thx again.

Regards

 

[Hil]

I've also noticed this problem- the cache file got to 4GB, and OneNote would
give me the same error and terminate.

I deleted the cache file and things are back to normal. I've also noticed
that my major performance lags are when ON is adding to the cache file. When
the file is small, everything runs just fine. After that, however, lags of
20 seconds are not uncommon.

My cache file (after about 20 minutes) is now 130MB in size- about 40 MB
larger than my entire ON notebook folder.

What exactly is the point of this cache if it's "caching" everything in the
folder? Why not just operate straight on the original data?

And is there any way to turn off this caching behavior?