Lost all my plugins! LW 7.5c's fault!

[policarpo]

Yep that suxx. Happened to me before.

Just make sure the Hub is inactive and reinstall LW 7.5 from the CD and upgrade to 7.5c

Should only take 10 or 15 minutes. Just copy over any configs you might have so you can get up and running sooner than later.

Also, for future reference, create a New folder for all plugins which are external to what ships with LW...this insures that all 3rd Party plugins are localized and separate from the shipping plugs.

Cheers.

[toonshady]

It seems like you have your downloaded plugins in the lightwave directory. Is there a reason for doing that? I never put any plugin or script in that directory. Even presets I save that I find important, I grab it out of there. I have a master folder on my harddrive where I put all my third party plugins in compressed format as they were downloaded from the web. Along side I will have folder for the plugins themselves, a folder for LW configs, a place for presets, etc. I keep them organize so when in time to migrate to another version, I have less headache and worries.

[Dennik]

I once lost all my lightwave directory (projects, stuff everything) because of a mistake in setup. Unfortunately lw's setup doesn't ask when it deletes things that aren't even in setup list to install.
Crappy installer if you ask me. Ever since i always make a complete backup of the whole LW directory before any update, just in case.

[DigiLusionist]

Yup. Same stuff has happened to me. Lost a lot of objects and scenes because of that update.

[Sil3]

Backups are our friends :D

The same happened to me...forget 7.5c or b, not worth it...

[nvvm]

Happened to me recently as well, thankfully I didn't lose much.

[Zarathustra]

Yes, it's Lightwave's fault...or wait, maybe it's Microsoft's...or perhaps Proton's...ah hell, it's George W's fault...or wait, maybe...

Backups are our friends :D

[UserDelta]

its happened to me twice for similar reasons

and its lightwaves fault when you install the help and when you try to uninstall the help, it deletes the lightwave directory and everything in it :)

lost a lot of time and time spent config files. wasnt happy.
i back everything up the first time that happened though.

[philstopford]

I tend to mirror the entire LW directory and current config files to a removable hard disk. I just don't trust LW not to screw up the configs or anything else and would hate to lose some / all data due to a nasty installer / uninstaller / user error.

The hard disk then gets disconnected and stowed safely to reduce the disk of any computer hardware / software issues taking the backup out.

It's more convenient in backup/restore (and also is more environmentally friendly) than CD-R and I've had reliability issues with CD-RW.

As for your plugins from 7.5c, one option is to gather the various pluins that you can still obtain safely, well away from LW. Clean install LW 7.0 and upgrade it to 7.5c. Trash your config files and then scan the entire LW directory (or optionally the plugins folder and then the LScript folder). You should then get the plugins, but they may be buried in the god awful 'additional' drop-downs. You can 'edit plugins' and see where the various plugins have located their entries by viewing by file name.

Once you have sorted that little lot out, it's then wise to build a separate 3rdparty plugins folder for your downloaded plugins to live in. Extract/install the plugins as usual and expect to lose a day or more to rebuilding your interface into something usable.

I am not expecting this situation with the interface to improve with LW 8.0, more's the pity.

Once you have it sorted, copy the 3rdparty plugins folder and your lw*.cfg files (in %userprofile%) to a safe place.

[policarpo]

I've recently archived my complete installs (minus the Scenes and Objects folder) for the Mac and PC version of LW on my iPod.

It's the best portable external hard drive i've purchased so far.

:beer:

[philstopford]

Yeah. I carry projects and plugins backups on the iPod, along with virtually every other bit of valuable data.

I've more data on it than music, strangely, but it's not something I would consider as a fully robust backup system. If it gets nicked by some nefarious individual, you're stuffed. iPods are very popular and have been seen as targets for muggers, etc. much like mobile phones.

[madheavy]

Well... it took me the good part of the morning, but I was able to rebuild my LW configs and plugins.
Now they are better than ever.
I found in one of my old CDs David Ikeda's plugins, what a goldmine! I have part of LW8 for free!
I can't believe I lived (modeled) without them.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions.
This won't ever happen again.

[Signal2Noise]

Originally posted by madheavy
...This won't ever happen again.

Or at least until [8] arrives for you to install!;)

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