Git repository broken after computer died

I managed to recover through:

rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
git fetch --all

Start by following the steps suggested in Recovering broken git repository:

• check whether .git/refs still contains anything useful
• check git reflog and failing that the contents of .git/logs/refs/heads/master or whatever branch you were on last
• run git fsck, potentially with --unreachable or --lost-found

This will hopefully allow you to figure out what the master ref should be so you can restore it (i.e. cat the correct SHA1 into .git/refs/heads/master).

In case any object contained in that commit is genuinely corrupted you can't restore your HEAD commit unfortunately. Assuming your working tree and/or index are intact you can try a git reset --soft (or failing that a git reset) to the previous commit and then re-do the commit. Avoid any operations that change your working tree s.a. git checkout -f or git reset --hard.

I had a similar issue following a blue screen of death on windows 8.1

I had a file in this location...

C:\www\<project>\.git\refs\remotes\origin\<problem-branch>

And it was empty whereas the other branch files in this folder has long strings inside of them.

NB I didn't have any changes/commits

• I backed up the <problem-branch> file
• Deleted the file
• git fetch --all to get the branch again

Then the tab auto completion started working again

If there is not many modified files, I think the convient way to solve this problem is:

1. backup the files you modified in the repo
2. remove your existing repo
3. re-clone it from server
4. paste the files from step 1 to the repo, and git commit -a