Recover a project that was never saved

Question

I started a new project this morning and, after putting ~3 hours of work into it, I tried to open a file from another project to get some code from it. I got a warning about discarding an unsaved object. After telling it to go ahead, I realized that it was referring to the project I had just been working on and not another file that I had just opened.

Even though I never saved the project, the various files containing my code and dataset had to exist on the hard-drive. Are they still there, perhaps in a temp folder? I'm developing on a box running Server 2008 R2 (don't ask, not my decision :) ).

Answer 1

This may help: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/saraford/archive/2008/02/14/did-you-know-where-visual-studio-saves-auto-recovered-files-in-the-case-of-an-unexpected-shutdown-151.aspx

Also check C:\Users{Username}\AppData\Local\Temporary Projects

You could try one of those undelete programs and see if it finds anything.

Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions

and check the item

Save new projects when created

Save frequently. :)

Answer 2

It might be worth checking out the folder where AutoRecover files are saved.

You can find the default file location in Visual Studio on the Tools - Options menu. Look in the Projects and Solutions section - expand that and look in General to find the default file locations.

My files were under C:\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Backup Files.