System Restore

I've never lost any data when doing a restore...sorry you had to be the one to break that rule.
Maybe a search for .mid files on your internal drives?
Later
Albert

You probably didn't loose it...you just haven't found it yet.

What I have done is set up a "work in progress" folder and a "finished songs" folder on an external drive. I have made it a habit of working from there. When I load from that drive and click on save, it backs up to the external HD.

Greg, I have also noticed (cause I have to do the system restore thing every so often too) that things do not come back up like they were. I have lost files from my downloads folder.

A good habit to have is ...BEFORE..you install a new program, make a restore point. That way you have a safety net to rely on.

Number two: when working on a song project in Cakewalk, after doing any major change or capturing the "perfect guitar solo".....BEFORE you do anything else...click on save. It only takes a few seconds (maybe 5 seconds) to do this simple thing that will save your butt if MC glitches....from my experience...it might be Vista issues, but it glitches, and you stand to loose ALL the changes you did since the last save.

So glad to hear that Greg! There's nothing worse than losing files you worked so hard on. It has happened to me before.

Nutty

And, umm....I also found the finished 'Suite For Piano And Orchestra' which also disappeared the last time this happened, a few months ago, and some other things, too. I had saved an almost-complete project version of SFPAO on disk, so it wasn't totally lost to me, and the complete audio version on another CD. Now I know a little more about how to find things which are right in front of me.

Greg, I have my system changes backed up every night to an external USB hard drive. That doesn't mean I am covered. The program that I use if I choose to do so will restore the entire Operating system and everything on my primary hard drive. I don't even use System restore anymore I have it turned off, I've had to many problems using it with other versions of Windows in the past that I feel it takes up too much system usage since I have another backup system.

Although I will tell you this, I made a mistake a few weeks ago where I thought I would try this one tweaking program, well it didn't really work out like it should have I wasn't impressed, anyway I thought what the heck I have everything backed up, so instead of removing the file why not just restore my backup and save a lot of looks at the registry and other things to make sure the program is no longer on the computer. I didn't take into account that the songs I wanted to keep "The Cakewalk Bundle Files" weren't saved yet. I had a couple of mixed down tracks but not the bundle files. I didn't lose 2 songs all together but I lost the bundle files because I didn't take into account the time period where I made them up and took for granted that they were just simpley backed up "A Normal re-action". It was a hard lesson learned.

I feel your pain, everybody probably says well just re-record the thing, but I know how it is to miss a "Moment in time" that you had recorded. That's the part that hurts the most IMO.

Keep on Keepin' on!

ORIGINAL: Beagle

at least you didn't loose everything, freeze. lessons learned, huh?

Yeah, your right Beagle, I lost the bundle files but still had the songs already mixed down, in other words I lost individual track control over those two songs and have them each in a wav file. Now I can't control the volume for the instruments individually because they are all one file. Oh well, it was a lesson learned, now I save the Bundle files to my external hard drive as soon as I am done working with them at that time.

ORIGINAL: Beagle

yeah, but you should be able to recreate them, right?

Yeah I can, but the problem I have nowadays is my lack of practising, I keep making up improvised stuff. Yeah, I can make them up or re-do them again even if I didn't have the tracks and probably 10 times better than the original, but I have this strange feeling like I am looking for something, I know that sounds crazy but I can't seem to find a particular sound or song style that I like for me. It's driving me crazy, I went from Rock to Metal a little country and some Alternative. I'm not looking for patterns in the song progressions or stereo typed songs I'm looking for something else and I just can't seem to get it. I guess the best thing is to not give up.