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Troubleshooting

“Windows protected your PC” / SmartScreen warning, or antivirus flags

Windows only. Linux packages are not code-signed either, but apt and the desktop raise no equivalent warning.

This is expected for now, not a sign something is wrong. FileGriffon:

  • Reads and writes across whole drives and large file trees
  • Generates parity data and can optionally encrypt its database

…which overlaps with heuristics used to detect ransomware. Release builds are also currently unsigned (code signing requires a registered business entity, planned for later), and the compiled binary format used (Nuitka) can itself trigger generic packer-detection flags in some AV engines.

What to expect: a SmartScreen “unrecognized app” warning on first run, and possibly a handful of flags out of ~70 engines on VirusTotal, usually with generic/heuristic names (not a named, specific threat). If you want to verify a specific release build, check for a VirusTotal report link on the download page, or scan the installer yourself.

If you’d rather verify the release yourself before trusting it, check for a VirusTotal report link on the download page.

Dashboard shows “Lost connection — retrying…”

The dashboard polls the local daemon every 3 seconds. If two polls in a row fail, you’ll see this banner. Causes:

  • The daemon process isn’t running (check the tray icon)
  • It crashed and the watchdog is restarting it (should self-recover within a few seconds)
  • Something else is bound to your dashboard port (default 8080, changeable in Settings → Advanced — FileGriffon falls back automatically if the saved port is already taken by something else)

A green “connection re-established” banner confirms recovery. If it never recovers, check the tray icon is present and restart FileGriffon.

An action fails or is blocked unexpectedly

A few situations that can cause a settings change, repair, or unlock to be refused:

  • The database is encrypted and currently locked — unlock it in Settings → Security. If unlocking itself fails, double-check your passphrase.
  • A repair-in-place was blocked because a scan is actively running on that vault — wait for the scan to finish and try again.
  • A repair or parity action failed because the drive holding parity storage is currently disconnected — reconnect it and retry.

A scan fails with “Vault folder is MISSING”

The drive is connected, but the folder (or file) the vault points at isn’t there any more — it was deleted, moved, or renamed outside FileGriffon.

Nothing was scanned, and no files were marked missing. FileGriffon stops rather than walking a location that doesn’t exist, because doing so would look exactly like every tracked file vanishing at once.

Three ways forward:

  • Put the folder back where it was, or
  • Open Vault settings and edit Vault path to point the vault at its new location — Preview relink shows how many file records will be updated, and the scan history is rewritten to the new path rather than lost, or
  • Remove the vault if you no longer want it tracked. This deletes only FileGriffon’s records, never your files.

If the message instead says “is the drive connected?”, that’s the other situation — the drive itself isn’t attached. Reconnect it and retry.

A file moved but shows as Missing + New instead of Moved

Move detection only matches files within the same scan pass — see Scanning & Detection. This is a known current limitation, not a bug.

An orange badge with a number appears in the nav bar

This is the orphaned-parity-file indicator. When a MISSING file that had parity protection is removed from the database (either swept after its grace window or matched as moved to a new location), its .par2 file is deliberately not deleted automatically — only the database record is. The badge shows how many of these leftover .par2 files are waiting for cleanup. Click it (or go to Settings → Database) and run the orphaned parity “Clean now” sweep to review and delete them. Nothing is ever deleted without you confirming.

A vault’s parity/missing-file cleanup never seems to run

Both parity catch-up and the missing-file retention sweep only run after a scan finishes. If the vault is set to manual scheduling and you rarely rescan it, switch it to scheduled or run a manual scan.

I forgot my database encryption passphrase

There is no recovery path — it’s a one-way key derivation. You’ll need to disable/re-enable encryption (starting fresh) if the passphrase is truly lost. See Security & Encryption.

Known limitations (current)

  • No command-line interface yet.
  • Drive Health’s Basic mode is off by default on Windows, where it is a WMI check with a known concurrency issue. Linux does not use WMI at all — Basic there is smartctl’s overall-health verdict and is not affected. The Advanced mode (Pro) uses a small helper service and real smartctl data on both platforms, and has this limitation on neither.
  • PAR2 repair only fixes same-size corruption within scoped, covered files — not truncation, edits, or files outside parity scope.
  • A vault-root drive disconnect (as opposed to the parity-storage drive) may not always surface a clear “not connected” state yet — verify current behavior if this matters to your setup, as this has been in flux.