Vortex lost all settings - please help

[cydonianknight21]

I've just opened vortex and it's like opening it for the first time. I wasn't signed in to nexus, all my mods and game data are gone, and the settings are reset to standard.

I've made sure my mods are in a seperate folder to Vortex data so they haven't been deleted in windows however I was in the middle of building a stable load order for Fallout 4.

 

I can't link it back together. Restoring from backup is worthless as the only backup showing is since the data loss. If i try to set it up again it tells me that the mod staging folder has to be empty, which it is not because it has the data FROM VORTEX in it.

 

Have I really lost weeks worth of work? what caused this? another update? please help. please. I've spent so long working on this. Please.

[Pickysaurus]

Seems like you may have deleted Vortex's appdata folder, which resets the application.

[cydonianknight21]

Sorry for my somewhat upset first post.

Here is how everything has happened so far:

• I've got vortex installed in a custom directory (with another custom directory beside for my mod staging which is safe but no longer linked to the app)
• The PC has not been turned off or changed in days, the last time I opened vortex was two days ago (17/06) and everything was fine at the time
• I didn't touch anything since vortex was last open and working

Building the stable load order for Fallout 4 has been an ongoing project I have been working on for a few weeks, enjoying vortex without any issues. The last thing I did was install a mod, test it, close the game, close vortex and go to bed. Today I've gone to open vortex and as you've said it seems in-app like the appdata folder has been deleted.

For reference everything is on a custom drive so my file structures are as follows:

 

(Q:)Bethesda\SteamGameData\steamapps\common\fallout4 (game data)

(Q:)Bethesda\Vortex (this is the appdata folder)

(Q:)Bethesda\VortexModStaging

 

Looking at my custom appdata folder, windows says it was last modified 11/06 and it still includes the vortex and uninstaller exe, a bunch of dlls and some other program files, and three folders: locales, resources, swiftshader

Now if we go to C:\ProgramData theres a brand new Vortex folder with dictionaries, downloads, fallout4, plugins, state.v2, temp folders. Logs, and installer.exe

I must reiterate that I did not delete anything or touch the PC between when it was working and when I opened it to this. I signed back in to nexus through vortex upon opening and seeing that it wasn't signed in, saw that all my data was still missing. I set it to manage fallout 4 and saw that all my data was still missing. I tried to set the staging folder back and of course it gave me the error of needs to be empty folder, so I stopped messing with it and came here.

 

UPDATE: In ProgramData\vortex\fallout4\profiles\skTRlO0Nj sits loadorder.txt and plugins.txt which are correct for what I had installed so far. I'm wondering if its a matter of moving files to directories to get everything hooked up again, but I would need further advise on what to move where.

[Pickysaurus]

You misunderstand.

 

By AppData I don't mean the Vortex install folder.

 

I mean C:\Users\{yourname}\AppData\Roaming\Vortex - this is where Vortex store's it's internal databases regardless of the install location of the app itself.

[cydonianknight21]

Well thankfully you've saved me for now. I was able to go into the properties of that folder and use a system restore point from two days ago, which has fixed my vortex.

Major, heart wrenching crisis averted. That was literally hours and hours of work I thought I'd lost.

 

However, and perhaps more seriously, I still didn't delete or change anything to cause this in the first place. I didn't even know that folder was there, I thought the point of installing vortex on Q: drive was that it would be self contained to that drive. I haven't been into appdata folder for a long long time.

 

This begs the question what could possibly cause such an issue to happen, if not me manually moving something? My next guess would be an issue with a windows update however the computer has remained on the entire time. I'm worried it could happen again and something could go wrong with my restore points and I really will lose everything

[HadToRegister]

Well thankfully you've saved me for now. I was able to go into the properties of that folder and use a system restore point from two days ago, which has fixed my vortex.

Major, heart wrenching crisis averted. That was literally hours and hours of work I thought I'd lost.

 

However, and perhaps more seriously, I still didn't delete or change anything to cause this in the first place. I didn't even know that folder was there, I thought the point of installing vortex on Q: drive was that it would be self contained to that drive. I haven't been into appdata folder for a long long time.

 

This begs the question what could possibly cause such an issue to happen, if not me manually moving something? My next guess would be an issue with a windows update however the computer has remained on the entire time. I'm worried it could happen again and something could go wrong with my restore points and I really will lose everything

 

 

It's your AntiVirus, or Windows Defender deleting it

This has been happening to a handful of people

[Tannin42]

I kind of doubt an AV would delete the AppData directory, they usually just delete/quarantine executables (.exe/.dll/.node files)

 

What could have deleted the appdata directory is in fact pretty mysterious, I'm not aware of any common offenders there.

It's more likely either a proper hardware defect or filesystem corruption, a virus or some overzealous disk cleaning software (something like ccleaner) that for some reason assumed the directory was no longer required.

 

Reasonable software would be aware that the data in appdata/roaming is potentially "valuable".

 

A bug in Vortex I can practically rule out because at startup Vortex opens the database (where Vortex stores all its meta information, settings and such) with an exclusive lock and doesn't release until shutting down. During that time deleting that appdata directory is impossible (for any application, including Vortex).

This means Vortex must have been closed at the time the directory got deleted.

[HadToRegister]

I kind of doubt an AV would delete the AppData directory, they usually just delete/quarantine executables (.exe/.dll/.node files)

 

What could have deleted the appdata directory is in fact pretty mysterious, I'm not aware of any common offenders there.

It's more likely either a proper hardware defect or filesystem corruption, a virus or some overzealous disk cleaning software (something like ccleaner) that for some reason assumed the directory was no longer required.

 

Reasonable software would be aware that the data in appdata/roaming is potentially "valuable".

 

A bug in Vortex I can practically rule out because at startup Vortex opens the database (where Vortex stores all its meta information, settings and such) with an exclusive lock and doesn't release until shutting down. During that time deleting that appdata directory is impossible (for any application, including Vortex).

This means Vortex must have been closed at the time the directory got deleted.

 

 

I didn't mean the entire appdata directory, maybe just the Vortex Directory, or certain files from it.

 

 

[cydonianknight21]

I tried to download a mod from nexus while vortex wasn't open without realising, and when vortex opened something went wrong. According to the vortex log file I'm looking at, it changed the staging folder and moved logging all to C:\ProgramData\Vortex

 

AV didn't do anything and I don't have any kind of cleaning bloatware on my pc.

It wasn't a deletion of the directory at all. The log files I have show when it was working and exactly when it reset, and after it had reset. All in one log. Shortly after that, the log moves itself to the above folder and starts a new file there. There is also about 3 other log files in the appdata folder documenting the last week or so. Those wouldn't be there if the directory was deleted.

 

I copied the appdata folder to desktop before restoring it so I could investigate it further but these log files prove that it wasn't a deletion. Theres a bunch of other files in there like preferences that had last modified dates well before 17/06

 

Without posting my whole load order and all the other stuff heres the end of the last time it worked and the beginning of today from the single file

 

 

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:05:38 GMT - debug: running checks event=mod-installed, count=1

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:05:38 GMT - debug: all checks completed event=mod-installed

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:05:38 GMT - debug: plugins sorted duration=1s

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:05:39 GMT - debug: running checks event=plugins-changed, count=1

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:05:39 GMT - debug: all checks completed event=plugins-changed

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:09:13 GMT - debug: running checks event=settings-changed, count=2

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:09:13 GMT - debug: all checks completed event=settings-changed

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:09:32 GMT - info: clean application end

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:52 GMT - info: --------------------------

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:52 GMT - info: Vortex Version 1.2.16

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:52 GMT - info: Parameters Q:\Vortex\Vortex.exe -d nxm://fallout4/mods/42753/files/174684?key=wnICRL4c0jlcvXop2kTEwQ&expires=1592727041&user_id=70942128

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:52 GMT - info: start file validation

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:55 GMT - info: done file validation

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:56 GMT - debug: showing splash screen

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:56 GMT - info: using C:\ProgramData\vortex as the storage directory

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:56 GMT - info: all further logging will happen in C:\ProgramData\vortex\vortex.log

[rmm200]

If you get to the point that it looks like a bug, and feels like a bug, make sure you report it through the Vortex reporting facilities. That way it will be tracked and maybe correlated with other user reports.

Problems reported in the support forum tend to age off to oblivion.