all is lost

[sms2169]

i just lost my whole game ex set up and has reverted to what i assume is standard game ex before advanced set up is there a way to get this back or do i really have to start from scratch, thanks

[Tom Speirs]

What exactly happened? Take a look in the config folder for a backup ini file.

[sms2169]

Not sure I was using some applications like plug in manager and emus service utility I must have clicked on a wrong application file in the game ex folder. I found the backup but it doesn't look like my setup it looks like what it's changed to

[sms2169]

What application could you open that would erase saved game ex settings. I never changed anything except turned on a couple plug ins, but did click on an .exe that didn't do anything. I want to get into the theme app but after I set it up again it makes me nervous that all settings are reset with no prompt or knowledge of it until you open game ex again.

[tthurman]

WfM had a similar issue back in November, and it appears it was an installation that became corrupted. He uninstalled everything, ran ccleaner registry cleaner, reinstalled everything, and to my knowledge his problem of disappearing configuration was solved.

nullPointer mentions another registry cleaner in the linked thread also, and also it can't hurt to check installation directories and permissions like mentioned there too.

Good luck!

[sms2169]

I did update last night but worked fine for a few hours while I was deciding on what custom settings I wanted to mess with and then gone, got a long night of work to redo but at least the emulators are setup just have to redo them in gameex. I will definitely have my game ex folder saved on 2 different drives every time I change something for another back up. I have it on the C and E drives now but havent saved an update in a year and have got about 25 emulators up and running since then. should have known better!

[stigzler]

Ouch. Sympathies.

[Adultery]

Well I can tell you that none of my plugins have any effect on the gameex settings (aside from reading the ini).

[sms2169]

I know it's something I clicked I just don't know what it would have been but for now I have mucho work to do. Backup backup backup that is my new motto

[thurmansevolution]

I had a similar situation some time ago I don't know if it was a corrupted file, kids, or a friend of the family that (accidentally) done this...

When I got home though, it appeared that all of my games were gone, and GameEx was in simple mode. I tried to relaunch it, but it didn't seam to work.

That was around a couple of weeks ago. I went and restored a previous version which I had saved to my external hard drive. It went well for a day or two, then GameEx started crashing on most cases when the arcade was booting up.

I ended up having to "wipe" everything clean and install a fresh copy and redid all my paths. Lol it took about a nights worth of work, but I don't have the problem anymore.

[tthurman]

Out of curiosity. was the backup you had saved, and in turn used to restore running on the same version of GameEx or saved from an older release?

[thurmansevolution]

It was an a little bit of an older release...probably two versions prior... and what I did was just copy everything over to C:\GameEx. When I launched it after that, I let it update to the latest version. I had to do it once before a couple of years ago (different reasons lol), and there were no issues after that. For some reason, this last time, it kept crashing.

I think though that it was overdue for a fresh reinstall altogether. I'm more familiar with all the great features, and now it works and looks even better...even logs into GameEx Online in a snap :-).

I'm still having issues though with displaying high scores within the front end. Hopefully I can figure that out one day lol

[rabidpuppy]

On the subject of backups, what methods or systems are people using these days?

I feel I am I am a bit antiquated, or perhaps unnecessarily complex. So curious how others do it.

I use a stack of 3.5" internal drives, and depending on the machine, a external USB 3.0 HDD dock, or internal removable HDD caddy.

Then it's the normal "windows backup" for system images, and then I use robocopy for data. robocopy allows you to only copy what has changed, & keep the destination the same as the source. I like having the data in an accessible format (not archived, zipped, or in a proprietary format). I've used it forever and am comfortable with it.

Sometimes if I'm lazy I will just do it from my main machine across the network and not physically goto the machine I'm backing up.

Then the drives are physically stored in a bungalow type building on my property (it's not attached to my house). Except for the drives for the upright arcade cabinet that's in the bungalow, they stay in the house.

This is for about 25TB. The arcade stuff is about 7TB on its own.

[Tom Speirs]

I use my own tool "Spesoft Backup" which is actually inspired by RoboCopy. It does the same thing but with an optiomal GUI and a few more options such as FTP Backup.

I also take a system image when its needed but that's mainly for Linux Servers where I don't have so many skills. I have no issues rebuilding windows and don't mind the task.

I also keep my data on a Raid 5 so that helps too. My local NAS for backup is also Raid 5 so has some protection too.

[CharlesLam]

25tb jesus. i thought i had a collection.