OK, I was working on a new scene in Vue 5 Esprit, with lots of trees and plants and such. 3 days I was working on it, and suddenly it announced I was out of memory, and crashed. Not to fear (I thought), I at least have the bak file. But when I tried to open either the original OR the bak, it refused. I don't understand how the bak file could be corrupted, when it wasn't even open. Anybody have any ideas what I can do about this? Or am I just screwed?

I think the problem was long before Vue anounced it and crashed. That's why the bak-file is corrupted too. This happens rarely but it happens sometimes. No fun, i agree. The only thing for the future is to save in an incremental way. File_1.vue, file_2.vue ... to avoid automatic things.

This has happened to me 2 or 3 times now, always at the point of being close to finishing a very long project. Frustrating to say the least, i think there is no way to get your scene back.

I've had that problem with extremely large scenes. But, after I tried several times, it miraculously opened. Turn off anything else you can afford to, reboot, shut down services and try again. Don't give up after the first Can't open file message. You may just get lucky like I did.