Computer powered down during tlmgr update, now tlmgr won't update packages, nor itself

Question

As title says, I was updating the packages in my TL installation (by tlmgr update --all) from the command line in Win7, but for some strange reason the computer just powered down during the update, and now after restarting it I can't get tlmgr to update anything (packages or itself by tlmgr update --self).

I can run the commands from the command line, but nothing happens. The command line window just stays black for a long time until the following line of text appears:

at C:/texlive/2011/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm line 108, <TMP> line 1.

After this appears, it returns back to the command line where I can type any new commands.

I assume this ends up in a reinstall of TL2011, but if someone have any suggestions for how I can try to fix this in order to avoid the reinstalling TL I'd be glad.

I also tried downloading the latest update of tlmgr from tug.org manually and install it, but didn't help.

Could it work to just replace the whole tl2011 install dir with one installation that got the exact same structure and file names from another computer (e.g. I have used C:\texlive\2011 on both computers)?

Below is a screen shot of the command line window (which basically gives me no leads).

Answer 1

In such cases, the recommended way is to follow the "disater recovry" instructions from this page: http://tug.org/texlive/tlmgr.html which should fix your tlmgr. Once it works, you should run tlmgr check --files and reinstall packages with missing files (if any) using tlmgr install --reinstall broken1 broken2 .... You may then finish the updates with the usual tlmgr update --all.

If the "disaster recovery" instructions aren't enough to fix your tlmgr then I'm afraid there is nothing to do but to reinstall TeX Live.

Copying another installation from another computer may work if the machines and installation options are identical; on Unix it would be guaranteed to work, but on Windows there are also registry entries (file associations, uninstall entry, etc) about which I'm not entirely sure.

Anyway, if the disaster recovery procedure doesn't work, before you reinstall everything, I'd like to encourage you to post a detailed report with the exact error messages to help the TeX Live team understand what went wrong with the procedure and possibly make it more robust.