1.4 Inventory Disappeared

[JKoontz]

Searched the forums for the specific problem and didn't find anything so I'm posting here in hopes of retrieving my inventory.  I spent several hours weighing, counting and changing values (prices mostly) based on my LHBS.  Everything was going fine for the day until I clicked Add items to shopping list.  Beersmith dutifully added the items in the recipes I'd made to my list and wiped out everything else from my warehouse.  Please tell me that the files are saved somewhere on my computer.

Hopefully,

Jim K.

[BeerSmith]

Jim,
  These are all stored in the individual files (Hops.bsmx, Grains.bsm, etc...) in your Program Files/BeerSmith directory by default.

  However under Vista you may also have a "Compatibility files" directory that shows up on the toolbar when you go to the BeerSmith directory.  This is where your data and the opts file likely lives.  The full path to the compatibility diectory is:  C:\Users\{USERNAME}\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\BeerSmith

  where {USERNAME} is your login name for Vista/Win 7.

  Note that on many systems this is a hidden/system directory which will not show up unless you go into the options for Windows file explorer and set it to show hidden/system files.

  It is possible if you changed some user permissions such as the UAC setting in windows it may have changed the pointer internally from one of these directories to the others.  I would try to locate these directories and make backup copies of them and then open the various bsm files to find the one that has your data in it.

Brad

[JKoontz]

Brad,

Thanks so much for the reply and I found my data!!  I guess at one point I downloaded the trial version of BeerSmith 2 and when I try to open the files you indicated above, BSM 2 opens.  How do I direct my 1.4 version to access the correct files?  I could fiddle around with it as a semi-experienced windows user but I don't want to lose the work, as you may understand.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Jim K.

[BeerSmith]

Jim,
  Unfortunately this is a sticky windows operating system issue.  Up until Vista it was fine if a program stored data in the "Program Files/BeerSmith" directory.  Then with Vista, Microsoft decided this was a big security issue and pushed data to the "virtual store" without really telling the program it was doing it.  Now, depending on what your user and security settings are you could have data in either location.  Even better, the operating system can change the location where these files are stored without telling the program, so basically you change a UAC setting in windows and suddenly your data dissappears...

  At this point I would probably just open the good files and copy/paste them over the old ones (i.e. replace your existing data using copy/paste).

  I did fix this in BeerSmith 2 by storing all data in the Documents/BeerSmith2 directory.

Brad