Opening SAS: An internal error has occurred while reading a compressed file

[ucdcrush]

Hi all. I am getting an error when I first open SAS:

ERROR: An internal error has occurred while reading a compressed file. Please
ERROR: call your SAS Site Representative and report the following: compress
ERROR: offset = 2269 , de-compress offset = 3010 , compress buf = "
ERROR: 2FA4D236206CE554ABC755B9ASDASKDHASKJDHA344512C79CD7C" .

I googled the error message, and found solutions related to repairing datasets. But in this case, there is no dataset (that I'm aware of) as I am only opening SAS, not opening a program nor a dataset.

The message says to contact my site rep, and I have started up the long chain of communication to get that information (I am in a state health department), but was wondering if anyone had suggestions for what might help. Thank you.

[SASKiwi]

Is this local SAS on a PC? One possible cause is there is an AUTOEXEC.SAS file running automatically when you start SAS up. Have a look in your SAS log - is there a note about running an AUTOEXEC? If so then try running SAS without an AUTOEXEC. On a command line try: SAS -noautoexec

[ucdcrush]

Thank you for the reply and suggestion. Yes, it's local SAS on a Windows 7 PC.

I looked in the short SAS log, and there is nothing about autoexec in it. Just the version info, products, SAS initialization time stats, and then the error I posted.

I tried running with -noautoexec and there was still the error message--  no difference in the log.

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

OK. Another reason might be a corrupted SASUSER library. Identify what folder your SASUSER library is pointing to (check your SAS Explorer if using the SAS Windowing Environment or if using EG the Server list) and copy the files in it to another folder and then delete all of the original folder files.

[ucdcrush]

That did it, thanks! After opening SAS having emptied that directory, got no error, and closed it. I then put my profile file back in which restored some of my layout configuration. Thank you again!

[ballardw]

Once up on a time I had a hopefully not the same problem but SAS wouldn't start at all just an error box.

The rood cause was our IT department had decided to "update" something by replacing everyone's Windows registry with a new version.

Which removed ALL of the SAS installation information as they used a "generic installed software list".

You might try posting a screen shot so we can see how far the start may have actually gotten.

Note that your configuration file (likely SASV9.cfg ) may have a line like:

-autoexec c:\path\autoexec.sas