Introduction
Most Teledyne LeCroy oscilloscopes include LabNotebook, a powerful documentation and annotation tool that creates complete, detailed waveform reports within the instrument itself. In rare instances, a LabNotebook database can become corrupted. But all is not lost: it is possible to reconstruct a LabNotebook .zip archive so that the database can be used for saving measurements or flashing back saved measurements. In this document, we’ll show you how.
When creating a new entry in a LabNotebook database the oscilloscope automatically saves:
- binary data files (*.trc) of all input channels C1 – C4
- binary data files (*.trc) of all displayed Math, Zoom or Memory traces
- a ScreenDump.png file with a screenshot of the actual measurement
- a Setup.lss file with the current oscilloscope settings
- an XPortRecord.xml file for creating a report of a LabNotebook entry
These are the components required for recreation of a LabNotebook .zip archive.
Structure of the .zip archive
The .zip archive has a defined folder and subfolder structure as shown in Figure 1. The base folder of the .zip archive is named MyLabNotebook.zip. This folder contains a Default subfolder and a LabNotebook.ini file; this file is the same in every LabNotebook .zip archive.
In the Default subfolder you will find as many subfolders as there are entries in the LabNotebook archive. These subfolders contain the binary data files, screenshot, setup, and .xml files.
If you have exported the data of a LabNotebook entry via the “Save Data to” function, you may not know the names of the subfolders which must be created in the Default folder. These names are found in the .xml file that is saved along with the other data files of a LabNotebook entry.
Recreating the .zip archive
The easiest way to recreate a LabNotebook .zip archive is to create the folder structure on your local hard drive and copy all the data files and the MyLabNotebook.ini file into the appropriate folders. After copying all of the files, compress the top-level My LabNotebook folder into a .zip archive using a .zip tool such as 7-Zip or WinZip.
There is one caveat to this approach: For every LabNotebook .zip archive, there is an Index.ini file in the same folder as the .zip file. If your LabNotebook database is named MyLabNotebook.zip, the .ini file will be named MyLabNotebookIndex.ini. The oscilloscope’s LabNotebook application uses this hidden .ini file to display the list of available entries of the LabNotebook .zip archive. If manual changes have been made to the .zip archive, this Index.ini file must also be manually recreated or updated.
To update the Index.ini file, simply delete the file and open the LabNotebook archive using the LabNotebook application. Loading the .zip archive in the oscilloscope application recreates the .ini file with the current content of the .zip archive in case the file does not exist. If the .ini file does already exist, opening the .zip archive will not update its contents. Thus, it will not match the content of the .zip archive.
Locating lost LabNotebook entries
In the event that a LabNotebook entry cannot be flashed back, there are two possible avenues to recovering the data. The first is to create a new, empty database and to import the data from the defective .zip archive into the new database using the import function of the LabNotebook tool. This procedure recreates all links and entries in the new .zip archive.
It is also possible that the data has been saved but not imported to the LabNotebook .zip archive. To investigate this possibility, look for a hidden folder named D:\Temp. If it contains subfolders named LabNotebookTemp, these folders may contain the lost data. If so, use the method outlined above to create a new empty database and populate it with the found data.
