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Troubleshooting

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

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 the port (default 8080)

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 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 (Experimental, the basic/free check) is Windows-only and off by default due to a known WMI concurrency issue. The separate SMART Drive Health (Pro) option uses a different mechanism (a small helper service, real smartctl data) and doesn’t have this limitation.
  • 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.