Deleting the Autopsy User Folder

If Autopsy starts behaving strangely, stops loading entirely, or menu items go missing, you probably need to delete your user folder. Doing so essenitally gives you a fresh installation. On Windows the user folder is located in "C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Roaming\autopsy".

Note that if you delete this folder you will lose all your Autopsy settings including keyword lists, interesting file sets, and general configuration. If you have settings you want to keep you can try the following:

Make a copy of the autopsy folder.
Delete the autopsy folder.
Open Autopsy to regenerate the folder with default settings.
Close Autopsy and copy over the old configuration files that look relevant. For example, if you're trying to restore your hash sets, you will want to copy back the "HashDatabases" folder and the "hashLookup.settings" file.

Alternately, you could copy the fresh user folder somewhere, move your old version back, and replace folders until it works again.

Viewing the Logs

The logs are generally the most helpful in figuring out why an error is occurring. There are two sets of logs - the system logs and the case logs. There is an option in the UI to open the log folder:

If you have a case open, clicking this will open the folder containing the case logs. If not, it will open the system log folder. You can also browse to these folders normally:

Case logs: (case folder)\Logs
System logs: C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Roaming\autopsy\var\log (on Windows)

In either case, the log of interest is most likely "autopsy.log.0", although it could be one of the older versions if you've closed and reopened Autopsy since the error occurred. You're looking for entries starting with "SEVERE" and possibly "WARNING" if there are no severe errors. Note that it's not unusual to have many warnings in the log. This is an example of a severe error with a stack trace:

Sep 23, 2020 9:48:24 AM org.sleuthkit.autopsy.casemodule.services.TagNameDefinition saveToCase
SEVERE: Error saving tag name definition
org.sleuthkit.datamodel.TskCoreException: Error adding row for Follow Up tag name to tag_names table
        at org.sleuthkit.datamodel.SleuthkitCase.addOrUpdateTagName(SleuthkitCase.java:9846)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.casemodule.services.TagNameDefinition.saveToCase(TagNameDefinition.java:239)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.casemodule.services.TagsManager.<init>(TagsManager.java:288)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.casemodule.services.Services.<init>(Services.java:50)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.casemodule.Case.openCaseLevelServices(Case.java:2480)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.casemodule.Case.open(Case.java:1993)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.casemodule.Case.lambda$doOpenCaseAction$6(Case.java:1863)
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: ResultSet closed
        at org.sqlite.core.CoreResultSet.checkOpen(CoreResultSet.java:76)
        at org.sqlite.jdbc3.JDBC3ResultSet.findColumn(JDBC3ResultSet.java:39)
        at org.sqlite.jdbc3.JDBC3ResultSet.getLong(JDBC3ResultSet.java:422)
        at com.mchange.v2.c3p0.impl.NewProxyResultSet.getLong(NewProxyResultSet.java:424)
        at org.sleuthkit.datamodel.SleuthkitCase.addOrUpdateTagName(SleuthkitCase.java:9843)
        ... 10 more

If the error message doesn't help you solve the problem yourself, please post to the forum including the full stack trace (if available).

Creating a Thread Dump

You can also generate a thread dump of the current state. This is useful if an ingest module or other process seems to be stuck. To generate a thread dump, go to "Help" then "Thread Dump" in the UI.

You'll then see a file similar to this in a text viewer:

"Module-Actions" Id=222 RUNNABLE
        at sun.management.ThreadImpl.getThreadInfo1(Native Method)
        at sun.management.ThreadImpl.getThreadInfo(ThreadImpl.java:178)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.actions.ThreadDumpAction$ThreadDumper.createThreadDump(ThreadDumpAction.java:120)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.actions.ThreadDumpAction$ThreadDumper.doInBackground(ThreadDumpAction.java:91)
        at org.sleuthkit.autopsy.actions.ThreadDumpAction$ThreadDumper.doInBackground(ThreadDumpAction.java:87)
        at javax.swing.SwingWorker$1.call(SwingWorker.java:295)
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
        at javax.swing.SwingWorker.run(SwingWorker.java:334)
        ...


"IM-start-ingest-jobs-0" Id=218 WAITING on java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject@7ceb341e
        at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)
        -  waiting on java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject@7ceb341e
        at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:175)
        at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject.await(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:2039)
        at java.util.concurrent.LinkedBlockingQueue.take(LinkedBlockingQueue.java:442)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.getTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1074)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1134)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

If the thread dump says anything about a deadlock then that's the problem. Please make sure to post any deadlocks to the forum. Even if not the thread dump could help diagnose your problem so consider including in your post.

Table of Contents

Deleting the Autopsy User Folder

Viewing the Logs

Creating a Thread Dump