Rocket Life crashes...corrupts saved work...no way to retreive

Rocket Life crashes...corrupts saved work...no way to retreive

I spent 18 days preparing a special book for a grieving family. The 19th day, as I was doing the last touch ups, Rocket Life crashed. It will not open my book as it had in days prior. Tech support was unable to retrieve it, and so I must start over. I wanted to use My Publisher, but they do not offer portrait orientation. I can't imagine why, when portrait books fit nicely on bookshelves and landscape books, not so much.
I highly recommend saving your work to TWO DIFFERENT DIRECTORIES each time you do a save. If one corrupts, the other one may not. Also, I suspect Rocket Life crashed because they updated their software. I believe so, because there was a substantial price increase from 99 cents to $1.29 PER PAGE over the 20 allowed. I didn't check the book/first 20
page prices because I was too angry! Rocket Life DOES NOT ADVISE its users before they update their software. YIKES! I can't tell you if the book would have been good or not. May never see it!

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Rocket Life crashes...corrupts saved work...no way to retreive

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Oct 20, 2011
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NEWEST VERSION IS A NIGHTMARE
by: Anonymous

The new, updated software I used in Fall of 2011 is a nightmare. I put a great deal of thought and effort into planning a page, placing each item
but if I need do even the tiniest thing on that nearly perfect page, Rocket Life scrambles, re-sizes and makes a melluvahess of all the work I did. The new update is a nightmare. The only solution I see is to competely uninstall Rocketlife, then re-install from an HP Printer installation CD and disable online services, until the book needs uploadling. Would need to repeat the uninstall and re-install process again each time I start a new book. I did have a few crashes with the last book, but I now SAVE every few minutes, so my loss would be minimal. I don't know if this will solve the problem, but it's worth a try.

Oct 20, 2011
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Can't order album due to "warnings of corrupt image"
by: Anonymous

I had lots of problems when trying to use Rocketlife on my iMac. I had to install product each time I wanted to retrieve & work on my album. Then my uploaded photos where not visible in the 'used' & 'unused' directory so I was unable to insert my photos onto an album page as I had no idea what they were so I had to upload them again. Then the system would crash & my work would be lost.

IT support were no help.

Transferred album to my PC (still couldn't see my photos that I wanted to use or had used). Then finally (after 100 hours of work) i placed my order which wouldn't go through. Message came back with page "warnings" - "missing or corrupt images". However it was not clear from the warning what the problem was, clicking on the photo on the 'questionable' page said that the photo was OK. I removed all the photos from the page, plus the theme page, text etc so that I had a blank page & the warning remained.

IT support thought the problem was corrupted theme pages. Themes changed, photos removed - still can't place order. Have tried 11 eleven times to order my book & every time a different page/s come back with 'warning'. IT support wants me to get Adobe Connect so they can look into it.

This is not a cheap option to resolve a problem on a $30 album. I like all the options that Rocketlife has for creating stunning pages (which i utilized to the max) but it has been a major hassle and i would not recommend this product.

Feb 26, 2011
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rocketlife problems
by: Anonymous

Not only have I had to deal with so many app crashes but it also mixes the photos so that when I put a photo on the page and go to crop it there is another photo there entirely and its totally corrupted. I have had to start so many times. 6 on this project so far. Customer service people are nice but the problems still exist.

Feb 18, 2011
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Rocket Life Soaring Again
by: Kelle

Rocket Life has made changes to its software that make it less vulnerable to crashes. I completed a re-write of the book that crashed like mad in July, in November, without incident, and began another, a 100 page book, since then. I am careful to back up often, however.

Feb 18, 2011
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Follow-up and New Version
by: RocketLife

A crash report is deeply concerning to us, so our director of customer support spoke at length with Ms. Kelle to work through these issues. We believe she's now happily using the desktop version of the software. (See the comment from "jkelle" at http://svenontech.com/reviews/?p=79.)

We've also updated the software dramatically since the original post. The online version now runs in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari as well as Internet Explorer. We now support Macintosh too.

The desktop version Ms. Kelle mentioned, HP Photo Creations, is a free download from www.hp.com/go/hppc. It adds some fun print-at-home projects, like photo cubes and single-page calendars.

We're happy to have helped Ms. Kelle find a solution to a very rare problem ? and delighted that she's making photobooks again.

Oct 13, 2010
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Try different publisher
by: Anonymous

You may want to try a different book publisher. One that works very well is Heritage Makers. I have made a few books with them and have never had a crash or any problems. In fact, as a result of a slight blemish on the cover of one my books which was entirely unnoticeable to me, I was sent an extra book at no extra cost.

Jul 20, 2010
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An addendum to my above post
by: Judith A. Kelle

Another crash today. This time it gave me an error message "extended exception" in Module RocketEngine.dll with version info: Unicode: v(undefined) Win6.0.6002.2 (Service Pack 3) IE 8.0.6001.18928
Call Stack" Base B690000.001B706BC5, RocketEngine.dll.

For those of you with techie talents, this might mean something. To me, it doesn't.
Again, very helpful tech support could not recuscitate my book, which I saved, but not every 7 minutes, as perhaps I should have. Loss was less this time.

Here's the solution: If your time is more valuable than $30, buy an el-cheapo HP Deskjet printer i.e. D1660, which includes Rocket Life software on its installation CD. It will be a STABLE program, unlike the engine you retreive at the Rocket Life website LAUNCH, which cannot run, except through Internet Explorer (8.0 is what I run in Vista). If you can't do that, it might be wise to wait for a short while when Rocket Life unveils it's new upgraded software that does not run through IE. Tech Support says I should use the HP program powered by Rocket Life for greater stability. It works exactly the same, with one huge exception....in HP, YOU CAN PRINT YOUR OWN BOOK on your HP Printer....
Or, you can choose to have Rocket Life print it.
If you use Rocket Life and love it, I hope this info is helpful. I like the results enough to go through this process AGAIN, and again!!!

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