A. Open the .apr file in a text editor.
B. Use the editor's Find and Replace option to change the drive letter of all the data sources in the project.
For example, if all the data is on drive c:\ and a network is on drive f:\, replace c:\ and f:\ with a non-defined letter (z:\).
C. Open the .apr file in ArcView.
If ArcView cannot find a dataset, it prompts the user find it. Click Cancel All at that point.
If the project opens, some of the data sets or the references to the data sets are corrupt. It is necessary to use a process of elimination to determine which data set is corrupt.
A. Open the .apr file in a text editor and search for the string 'Path:'.
Each object referenced by this string is a FileName object, which provides the source name for the data file. When searching for all occurrences of 'Path:', the text lines appear as such:
(FN.958
Path: "c:/ /sample.shp"
B. Use a textfile, or a piece of paper, to create a list of all data sources, skipping duplicate definitions.
C. Do a project repair on each data source to determine which data ArcView is unable to find (refer to page 46 in "Using ArcView GIS" book).
For example, assume that the project file contains the following data paths:
c:/gisdata/pop_90.dbf
c:/gisdata/county.shp
c:/gisdata/images/backgrnd.tif
Find and replace the pop_90.dbf string with something like 'testing'. When ArcView reads the FileName object referring to 'testing', it pauses and asks the user to find 'c:/gisdata/testing'.
D. Click Cancel if ArcView displays a prompt to find the data source.
If the .apr file opens successfully, there is something wrong with that data set or a reference to that data set. Save the project without the corrupt data set.
If the project still does not open, test each data set until the set or sets are found that are keeping the project from opening.