Unity deleted all cs files open in Visual Studio after computer crash

I had a project open and had probably 15-20 files open in Visual Studio. Went to bed and found my laptop had crashed the next morning and rebooted. Opened up Unity Hub, and all the files in VS are now gone. Strangely enough it doesn't even recognize the TMPro namespace anymore either...

Anyone ever seen this behavior before?

 

I've seen changes that Visual Studio said were saved (i.e. CTRL+S and the star goes away) not actually having been saved when I opened the file again later. I've seen saving files in VS not cause Unity to react to them being saved when ALT+TAB back - which I assumed meant they hadn't actually been saved again (prompting CTRL+A,C then V into another file before restarting my system). Either way, both issues felt like VS bugs ..and scary ones at that.

 

I do have a backup, but it is a few weeks old. So I can get close to where I was, but not right. Either way, as soon as I get back up and running again I'm going to setup Git for sure. Hate having to recreate.

 

As near as I can tell, any of the scripts that I had open in VS are the files that got deleted. Other files with similar purposes are still there. If this is a VS bug, it is super scary for sure.

 

The more I look into this, the worse it gets. I'm missing 90% of my sprites in Unity, and overall about 66% of my project. This is really bad

No idea what happened, but I know all these files were there and working a few days ago.

 

Maybe you have an antivirus that quarantined the files? If is set on auto it will get any file on the system and put it in quarantine or worse, delete automatically.

 

• Did) you look into actual folder and check for asset files? Are these there? Or physically missing? Don't check via Unity.
• Check also OS bin.
• What is your project directory location and what is your Unity installation location.
• What is your storage avqilable space.
• You seems do not use any repository, as asked earlier, if you do. I suggest do it primaryly and learn ASAP, how to use it. Check github and github desktop for example.
• If your laptop crashed, you may have potentially different issues. Even disk failure. You should make secondary drive/online backups of your projects and documents.

 

Open files missing after a computer crash would having me assuming filesystem corruption caused by the crash until proven otherwise, regardless of the application involved. First step would be to scan your filesystem for said corruption.

 

Any advice on a good file system scanner for this type of corruption?

 

Windows has that built in, just need to tell it to check the disk. Don't know what Mac has.

 

This is insane! Just happened to me as well. Closed the project, re-opened it, it somehow reverted or created a blank HDRP template. This happened in Unity 2021.3.2f1. Files are stored on a dedicated partition. There seems to have been a hub update in progress or something, but somehow it triggered the creation of a blank template - despite the project already existing.

No file or disk corruption. No fancy VCS, just unity and rider.

 

Lost progress / project / work / stuff disappeared in Unity.

This article is to help you when you have lost significant progress or work in your Unity project.

It is designed to give you avenues of discovery and investigation.

It is NOT a guarantee of restoring your lost work. It is NOT a substitute for proper IT / Data security procedures.

To decide which parts are applicable to you, look for major bolded headings.

EVERYTHING IS GONE, YOU CANNOT OPEN THE PROJECT

Your project probably is still on your computer. Try a computer-wide search for some unique filenames that you know are in the project you think is gone.

To start your search, one common file to all Unity projects is named

ProjectSettings.asset

Some things that might have happened:

- you are not opening the project that you think you are

- you are in the correct project but not opening the same scene you had open before

- you dragged the project (or part of it) into the trash (intentionally or inadvertently)

- you moved the project (or part of it) somewhere else (intentionally or inadvertently)

- an overly-aggressive antivirus solution quarantined it because it saw code being compiled in there

- you're using a directory sync like OneDrive or Dropbox... NEVER USE THESE SERVICES WITH UNITY!

- something else??

As I said, it's probably still all on your system to be found if you look in the right places.

A typical Unity project will have at a minimum the following folders:

Assets\

ProjectSettings\

Packages\

EVERYTHING IS PRESENT BUT MY SCENE WINDOW IS BLANK

Close Unity and make a full project backup RIGHT NOW. Do not do ANYTHING else until you back it up 100%.

Ideally copy that backup to another computer, or back it up into the cloud. This is just basic data processing best practices.

If you can see all the files and folders of your project, make sure you are opening the scene file you were working in.

Once you have opened the scene, look in the hierarchy window, select an object and move the mouse over the Scene window and press F to focus that object.

Additional notes:

- ALWAYS use proper industrial grade source control (see below)
- NEVER use Dropbox or any file sync mechanism in Unity.
- NEVER move files within your project, except by doing it within Unity
- ALWAYS be sure you are fully backed up before upgrading Unity

SCRIPTS OR ASSETS ARE MISSING OR BLANK

Some info about Missing script warnings, GUIDs, renaming GUIDs, etc:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/problem-with-git-and-missing-scripts.1090876/#post-7024801
https://forum.unity.com/threads/scr...ead-after-loading-editor.998413/#post-6487297
https://forum.unity.com/threads/scr...ead-after-loading-editor.998413/#post-6488230

EVERYTHING in Unity is connected to the above GUID, which is stored ONLY in the metafile.

It is super-easy to inadvertently change it by renaming outside of Unity. Don't do that. Instead:

- close Visual Studio (important!)
- rename the file(s) in Unity
- in Unity do Assets -> Open C# Project to reopen Visual Studio
- now rename the actual classes, and MAKE SURE THE FILE NAMES DO NOT CHANGE!

If you are NOT using source control while you do this, renaming files is an EXTREMELY dangerous process. Use source control at all times so that you can trivially revert if you miss a critical step and damage your project.

I'm sorry you've had this issue. Please consider using proper industrial-grade enterprise-qualified source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git (completely outside of Unity) because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up as well as free places to host your repo (BitBucket, Github, Gitlab, etc.).

You can also push git repositories to other drives: thumb drives, USB drives, network drives, etc., effectively putting a complete copy of the repository there.

As far as configuring Unity to play nice with git, keep this in mind:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/prefab-links-keep-getting-dumped-on-git-pull.646600/#post-7142306

Here's how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/2-steps-backwards.965048/#post-6282497

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/whe...grammer-example-in-text.1048739/#post-6783740

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/your-techniques-to-share-code-between-projects.575959/#post-3835837

Setting up an appropriate .gitignore file for Unity3D:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/removing-il2cpp_cache-from-project.1084607/#post-6997067

Generally setting Unity up (includes above .gitignore concepts):

https://thoughtbot.com/blog/how-to-git-with-unity

It is only simple economics that you must expend as much effort into backing it up as you feel the work is worth in the first place. Digital storage is so unbelievably cheap today that you can buy gigabytes of flash drive storage for about the price of a cup of coffee. It's simply ridiculous not to back up.

"Use source control or you will be really sad sooner or later." - StarManta on the Unity3D forum boards

 

Thanks for this. Fortunately Rider IDE has a "local history" option and I reverted everything back. Obviously using GIT, but that shouldn't be a workaround unity's one of many bugs.