Avoiding Chart Database Corruption When Updating JeppView or NavSuite

One of my old EFB customers emailed me with this problem: he’s out on the road for week-long trip, multi-leg trip, and when he tried to update JeppView online, the update failed during installation and corrupted his chart database. He left his original JeppView installation CDs back at the hangar, and Jeppesen won’t be able to overnight replacement disks for at least twenty-four hours. Fortunately, he has a backup EFB, he doesn’t want to risk corrupting the database on the second system by doing another online update, but he needs current charts.

The solution I’ve used in the past is fairly simple: backup the entire Jeppesen folder. Prior to every update, I copy and paste the Jeppesen program folder to an my “Jepp Archive” folder, which I keep on a removable hard drive (a four gigabyte or better “thumb” drive also works well). I could copy it to an Archive folder on the “C:” drive, or any other local drive on the EFB, but storing the backup on an external drive has a unique advantage, which I’ll discuss later.

To back up your Jeppesen directory follow these steps:

1. Create and Archive folder on your removable drive or EFB, as long as it is not inside the Jeppesen folder.
2. Open My Computer, go to your “C:” drive (typically the drive where JeppView is installed), and navigate to the folder containing the “Jeppesen” folder.             
   1. On Windows XP, you can find the Jeppesen on the “C:\” drive/
   2. In Windows Vista or Windows 7 look in “C:\Program Data”.
      1. The “Program Data” folder is hidden by default in Windows Vista and Windows 7, so to see it you may need to go to ORGANIZE>FOLDER AND SEARCH OPTIONS>VIEW.
      2. Select “Show hidden files and folder”.
      3. Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files”.
      4. Click OK.
   3. On Windows XP, you may find the Jeppesen folder or the “C:\” drive root directory and in “C:\Program Files”.
      1. If the” Jeppesen” folder exists in “C:\Program Files”, this is the one you want to back up.
      2. Otherwise, just backup “C:\Jeppesen”.
3. To back up the “Jeppesen” folder, single click on the “Jeppesen” folder to highlight it.
4. Go to EDIT>COPY.
5. Navigate to your backup drive and open the “Archive” folder.
6. Go to EDIT>PASTE.
7. Wait until the copying completes.
8. Run the Jeppesen Update client (or update CD).
9. TEST your JeppView installation (this is VERY important).

If the update process corrupts you charts again, make sure you exit all Jeppesen applications, and simply copy the “Jeppesen” folder from your archive drive and paste it into the directory containing your corrupted “Jeppesen” folder. This should overwrite the corrupted files and at least take you back to working expired charts.

Now, in the case of the operator I previously mentioned, he was able to take the backup copy from his second EFB and paste it into the Jeppesen folder on his first EFB. This won’t work in all cases, but because this operator’s EFBs were identical and each was installed using one of the available activations from the same serial number, copying and pasting the Jeppesen directory from one to the other worked fine.

After both EFBs were running again, the operator was able to finish updating the first EFB successfully (he had to remember to baby-sit the device throughout the entire JeppView update to ensure it didn’t go to sleep). He then created an Update Pack, transferred it to the second EFB using the same “thumb” drive he used to store the backup.

So, the moral of this story is: “Always backup JeppView before you update it!” Finally, always test your installation after an update by opening several charts: just because the Jeppesen installer says it completed successfully, it does not mean the database was not corrupted.