Tuesday, April 29, 2014

How to Solve Lotus Notes Error 0x1A5

Lotus Notes was actually developed by Lotus Development Corporation in 1989. But in 1995 it was acquired by highly famous IT organization known as IBM. Like Outlook an email client application works with Exchange Server a server application, Lotus Notes also collaborated with Lotus Domino to complete client-server architecture. Similar to other emailing applications, Lotus Notes also performs various tasks like managing emails, contacts, tasks, calendars, ToDo lists and many vital business oriented process. IBM keep on striving upon adding more user-friendly and advance features which can enhance the performance and work flow of the organization using Notes. It can be observed with the every launch of version, Notes has delivered some extra features which attracts the user towards the favour of the application.

However there are users who find Lotus Notes as a tough and highly complex application. Also there are speculations that the installation and maintenance cost of Notes is also very high. The application interface is so complex that user demands for initial training. The security feature of Notes which is very handy and unique sometimes proves to be very irritating and time consuming. It demands for credentials even for less crucial files and folders. Still there are large sections of users who despite of such negative aspect are willing to continue with Lotus Notes.

Another adroit feature of Notes includes the common file formatting of Lotus Notes and Domino Server. Both the client-server application has NSF file format which eases number of formatting issues of the user. Nevertheless, like other file formats NSF is also susceptible of number of issues which can corrupt or malfunction the formatting. The cause of file corruption can be numerous but the most general and common reasons are mentioned below:

  • Input / Output error.
  • Virus Attack.
  • Software / Hardware malfunctioning.  
Abovementioned were normal scenarios when NSF files corruption can be observed. Now let us discuss upon a more technical and different scenario when Notes user faces a file corruption issue.

"Lotus Notes: Error 0x1A5"

The abovementioned error can be categorised in two scenarios having different solutions:
Scenario 1:
Reason:
The possible reason of the abovementioned scenario can be the missing of Directory parameter (Directory=) from Notes.ini file. The value of this parameter should be set to the path of the data directory on your server.
Solution: 
User can make use of below mentioned steps to resolve the error of lost parameter in Notes.ini file:  

  • Open the server's notes.ini file using Notepad or WordPad. 
  • Under the "NotesProgram=" line, add "Directory=<full path to your domino data directory>" For example: Directory=C:\Lotus\Domino\Data.
  • Save and close the notes.ini file and start the Domino server.
Scenario 2:
Reason:
The second possible reason can be, while running a maintenance task such as fixup, compact, or updall on a database of a partitioned server, one can receive the aforementioned error i.e. “Lotus Notes error:0x1A5.”
Solution: 
you can follow these steps in command prompt:
  • Go to one of the partitioned server's data directory.  E.g. C:\Lotus\Domino\Data1 
  • Execute the following line: ..\<desired executable.exe> <desired database> <options>.  E.g. ..\nfixup.exe names.nsf -F 

The aforementioned solutions are well executed in the state of the occurence of an error. However it has been observed in some complex situations the prescribed solution fails to tackle the mentioned error. The main reason behind the failure can be the limited knowledge of the user, as it can be seen that the mentioned solutions are tough to be executed by the novice user. Hence a better solution is to give a try to a reliable third party Lotus Notes recovery tool.  There are large numbers of such recovery tools available in the market which can rectify any error related to NSF files.

  • Stellar Phoenix Lotus Notes Recovery.
  • Recovery for Lotus Notes.
  • Lotus Notes (Client Server) recovery tool.