Lost project files after updating - .dmp>.cwp conversion?

[Simple Verse]

Hi everyone

I just realized some of my projects I saved before updating the 2022.11 version like almost half a year ago have been lost. It's been many months since I touched them and I was shifting to other projects, but now when I was trying to look up for them I can not find them anywhere. I remember they used pop up as recently used project to select when opening Cakewalk, but at some point I guess they stopped showing up, but back then I didn't pay attention as I said I had another projects going on. But I now wanted to look into them and they are lost. What's weird that they were located on other partition than C where the CBB is installed, if I remember correctly, so I wonder how they can be erased like that during the update?

There's only find some dump files(.DMP) in some Picture Cache folder that I found by search function. Their size seem like they would be the dumped project files. The autosave function has apparently not been active by default. Is there any hope in trying to convert the dump files back into working .cwp project files?

I'm a disappointed. Usually autosave is enabled in most DAW's as default and updates do not erase your saved projects like this, especially from other partitions.

I would appreciate any ideas. Thank you in advance.

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Simple Verse

[57Gregy]

.dmp files are not the lost projects. They are files of all the things that went wrong when the program crashed.

[John Vere]

If you remember the exact names just enter that in windows search in the upper right corner. 
For the future if you should always create a folder in the drive where you store your projects and name it. Then in preferences folder location change the pathway for projects to that folder. 
It doesn’t matter what software you use it is up to you to keep track of where files are stored not the software.  

[Simple Verse]

5 minutes ago, JohnnyV said:

If you remember the exact names just enter that in windows search in the upper right corner. 
For the future if you should always create a folder in the drive where you store your projects and name it. Then in preferences folder location change the pathway for projects to that folder. 
It doesn’t matter what software you use it is up to you to keep track of where files are stored not the software.  

Thanks fore the reply. I know the names of them and I had them on certain folder in D partition, but they are gone. And even if they were in the default C folder they should not be erased as a result of an update. I found there in default folder location -> C : Cakewalk Projects was one "test" project folder and project file from last summer 2022 that had not been erased apparently. But it's none of the more important ones. So it has been selective in erasing.

[billp]

Just to be clear

1 hour ago, Simple Verse said:

So it has been selective in erasing

Just to be clear, upgrading, or even uninstalling and reinstalling CbB, will not delete your project files or project folder(s). If they are gone, it is for some other reason. Search your entire system for whatever project type you saved them as: "*.cwp", "*.cwb", "*.mid", "*.bun".

[Lord Tim]

There's no way an update has lost any files, it just doesn't work like that. In fact, even if you uninstall Cakewalk entirely, it doesn't touch your user files at all, and that's by design. There's a whole knowledge base article about doing a clean install in the case of some serious problems and even that doesn't delete user files unless you specifically manually do that.

There's got to be something else at play here.

[Simple Verse]

24 minutes ago, billp said:

Just to be clear

Just to be clear, upgrading, or even uninstalling and reinstalling CbB, will not delete your project files or project folder(s). If they are gone, it is for some other reason. Search your entire system for whatever project type you saved them as: "*.cwp", "*.cwb", "*.mid", "*.bun".

Thanks! I did full search with those project types and quotation marks and I found them!! There happened to be sort of duplicate folder of the same name with same content (except those projects) that I had been placing somewhere else by coincidence I guess. Very strange indeed the search didn't find them by their actual names but only the file type. And that they stopped showing up in the start up. However. I'm relieved. Thank you so much.