Win OS reinstall looses Program files including logs - GCM file found

[David Beattie]

Mary,
As far as I know....
It's not actually normal (in the Microsoft sense of the world) to end up with a Windows XP re-install that preserved your data while erasing your Program Files directory.  I wasn't sure about this, since things have changed so much in Vista, 7, and 8, but I looked it up: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978307In addition to the 5 ways Microsoft lists, there's a 6th way, called a "Repair Install"... and none of these methods erase "Program Files" unless they also erase your whole hard drive and leave you with no data at all.
So I am concluding that your "restore" of Windows was probably a "recovery" operation from the computer manufacturer, rather than a pure Windows XP install.  I've seen this sort of thing on HP computers a lot, although I'm sure other brands (Toshiba, etc.) have recovery options that try to preserve data too.  There are also plenty of system recovery options out there that erase all data!  so consider yourself lucky.
All the more recent versions of Windows (Vista, 7, 8), when they install overtop of an old operating system move the Program Files, Windows folders, etc. into a subfolder called "Windows.old"... just in case you need to get files out of there which were stored in Program Files when they shouldn't have been, or in case you need to extract license keys, etc.  Makes me wonder if your system restore did anything similar?
If not, if the Program Files folder really was deleted and not simply moved to some hidden/out-of-the-way location... then perhaps you can try some data recovery software to try to get the data files back which were deleted.  The software I use (R-Studio) is not free, but I saw a program called "TestDisk" mentioned on a forum which is free, and sounds like it works similarly to the better varieties of commercial software.  http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Hope this helps!
David Beattie 

     On Monday, February 2, 2015 11:48 AM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
   

 
> On Feb 2, 2015, at 10:42 AM, Mary Ann Wallace <wallace at naples.net> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for changing the target save folder.
> 
> Is this "fix" available only in a beta or online version?  I'm assuming those of us using v.2.6.3 won't have this available to us. I am running Gnucash v.2.6.3 originally installed on Win 7 Pro 32-bit (X84) laptop and after the data I lost that was in C:\Program Files, I've been debating downloading a new version and starting my 2015 year with that while I run v.2.6.3 on another computer to update it with the 6 months of data lost.  I have hard copies of data, so I don't need consecutive years on the same program.  I can just start with a new balance sheet as of Jan 1 and zero income. But having data files automatically saved to Documents would be a huge relief and make backing up easier.

Since I just pushed the change, it isn’t even in today’s nightly build. It will be in 2.6.6.

However, it’s just the default on a brand-new installation. When GnuCash opens a file it sets the default to where that file is, and File>Save As… will change the location of where your file is saved. Even if you upgrade without relocating your file GnuCash will remember where the file is. So do the following *right now*:

Quit GnuCash if it’s running.

Open Windows Explorer, go to your user documents directory (C:\Users\mary\Documents if your userid is mary) and create a new folder named Accounts.

Navigate to C:\Program Files (X86)\gnucash\bin, and highlight everything that begins with your filename — that will include the file itself, foo.gnucash, the backup files foo.gnucash.2015013015153327.gnucash, and the log files foo.gnucash.2015013015153327.gnucash.log (the numbers are timestamps; I made that one up as an example) and drag the lot of them to that new Accounts folder.

Start GnuCash. It will complain that it can’t find your file. Dismiss the message box and select File>Open. On the left side of the dialog box there’s a speedbar with a button with your name on it. Click it. That will switch you to your home directory, from which you can navigate to Documents\Accounts and find your account file. Select it and click OK.

>From now on GnuCash will open with the last file opened and any new files will default to being saved in the new Accounts folder. That will persist even after you upgrade to a new version of GnuCash.

Then, if you haven’t already done so, get yourself an external disk and some automatic backup software and start using it!

Regards,
John Ralls


_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user at gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.