How To Recover A Broken JDownloader Download Queue

When I'm downloading files from file hosting websites I often use JDownloader for a more convenient download experience. While it still does not automate the captcha entering process before downloads start, it ensures that I do not have to keep the websites open until the countdown reaches zero. And, I get to keep the downloads in queue if they do not finish on that day.

Today while starting up JDownloader I noticed a strange behavior. The program prompted to pick a language first, and then showed up with an empty download queue. That was unfortunate since I had some downloads left in the queue from the other day.

I first thought that I had just installed a second instance of JDownloader, but discovered a moment later that the new installation seemed to have overwritten the database file containing the file download queue.

I knew that JDownloader was creating backups of the database in regular intervals. I checked the backup folder of the JDownloader program folder to find out that the program had saved more than a dozen database backups in the past months.

This was interesting in itself as it can be seen as a privacy issue by some users as it is possible to restore the download queue with the help of the backups.

The last database backup file is database.zip. To restore it you need to do the following. Quit the JDownloader program. Make sure it is completely terminated and not sitting minimized in the system tray.

Open the database.zip file and extract the contents (database.properties and database.script) to the main JDownloader/config/ directory. Replace the two database files listed there.

This restores the download queue. You may still be missing a few downloads though depending on the time and day the last backup was created by the file downloader. In my case, the last backup had been created four days ago which meant that I lost a few file downloads that I added after that date.

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