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This has happened to me twice now. I create a world (survival, not hardcore), I play for a week or so, then, one day, when I go to open it, it's gone.

I've went to .minecraft and verified that the worlds are still there and they don't appear to be missing any files.

What's going on and how can I stop this from happening again?

And especially, can I get my worlds back?

John the Green
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1 Answers1

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If you're closing minecraft in mid-stream while it's writing files then the level.dat file can be corrupted and result in your "world" disappearing. You can repair the world in mcedit to get your world back. =)

edit

For further instructions this video seems to cover things adequately:

Ken
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  • Practically every time I exit it it gives me a black screen that doesn't go away for several minutes, so this sounds plausible. I will try MCEdit. Would waiting at the main screen before exiting reduce my chances of it happening again? – John the Green Dec 11 '11 at 22:02
  • I've never heard of this problem before, so maybe it would? I suspect it's a mod that is causing your java to crash on leaving your world, or something along similar lines. A java update might help too. – Ken Dec 12 '11 at 00:30
  • I have pure vanilla. It's running on Ubuntu though, in my experience I get this error on Ubuntu yet not on Windows XP. I will see about updating Java though. – John the Green Dec 12 '11 at 03:37
  • AH, yeah I've heard bad things before (I can't remember specifics off the top of my head) regarding non win/mac operating systems and minecraft. I hate to wave my hand and say "oh that's just a mysterious mojang bug, sucks to be on ubuntu" but that's pretty much just a mysterious mojang bug for ubuntu/*nix operating systems. =/ A google search for general "black screen ubuntu" terms on the official minecraft forums returns nearly 900 results. If windows is an option for you then I highly recommend sticking with that. – Ken Dec 12 '11 at 19:18
  • If you're running Ubuntu, consider making a script that takes a copy of the world before launching the server/game, so that in the event Notch's code implodes you at least have a backup you can revert to. – Xkeeper Dec 12 '11 at 23:12
  • Could you elaborate on the MCEdit repair process? – John the Green Dec 16 '11 at 21:32
  • Apparently my world is beyond repair. I opened it in MCEdit and chunks were missing. Moving the spawn got the game to see it again, but when I loaded it it had regenerated most of the chunks from a different seed. Oh well. :( – John the Green Dec 17 '11 at 00:18