The back end of PDM has many tools available for troubleshooting errors in the vault. If you are running into “The Archive Server could not find the file with the specified ID” or “Error accessing a file on the Archive Server” error messages, it could be caused by many different sources, so this fix may not work for every scenario. This specific case can occur when an error during a change to the vault is made. Changes such as modifying an install, adding a vault, changes to servers, or new programs using a SQL database.

Regardless of what caused the errors, when trying to check a file in the vault, this error message pops up:

Or when trying to add files to the vault from a local drive and get this error “Error accessing a file on the Archive Server”

If you are experiencing both these errors, they can be symptoms of a simple SOLIDWORKS PDM troubleshooting fix.

If you have gone this far in the diagnoses, notice how the log file doesn’t have any record of your archive server errors (Log file information listed near bottom of this article). This can be confusing since the error is expected to be recorded to the log. In this case, you must verify your archive folder location against the archive table registry key.

To verify against Archive Table Registry Key:

1. Open the Archive Server Configuration tool. (Start > Archive Server Configuration)
2. Navigate to your Archives folder and find the vault that is causing errors. Right-click the vault and select “Properties”. In the properties window there is information about the vaults archive location path.

   

   

   
   
3. Copy and paste this path in File Explorer and compare it to the path given in the Archive Server tool. It is easy to overlook very minute details, but upon thorough comparison we can see there is a space in “PDM Data” in File Explorer, but in the Archive Server Tool, the path has it written as “PDMData” with no space.
4. Go ahead and change the path in File Explorer to match what is given in the archive tool and that should fix the errors.
5. Refresh the vault from windows and restart the server from the Archive Server tool.
6. Test the changes: try to upload new files to your vault and check them in.The archive server reference path has been restored and the vault should be functioning as it did before the errors started.
   

   If this didn’t solve the issue…Another SOLIDWORKS PDM Troubleshooting Option

   Usually, if you get errors in the vault, you can access more information about them from the “SOLIDWORKS PDM Administration Tool” under Local Settings > Log File.

When viewing errors from the log files it will give information such as the one below:

Here you can gather important information such as the Server name, Database, Module, etc.

Be responsible when troubleshooting systems that are holding your businesses’ data, it is extremely important that you are managing one of your company’s most important assets, it’s DATA.

Our clients on subscription have access to our professional tech-support team who deal with these types of challenges every day. Save time and headache by reaching out to support and let us get you up and running again.