OMG, I am hosed...Lost changes! ?
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OK, I'm in a state of panic. I opened up a VS2003 (C# .NET) project I've been working on for several months now to start adding some features per users request. As I started entering my new methods/forms etc. I opened up my mainform in designer mode and to my horror realized that my main project has mysteriously reverted back to a version that's a month old. Two entire versions behind what it should be. Oh no says I, what's going on here? So I carefully tiptoe around and look at all the files in my project folder (time to abandon the little tweaks I've done in the last few minutes..I've halted everything right in the middle of an edit to figure out what's going on here) As a normal practice, I keep a set of comments at the top of my code (like most people) and sure enough, my comments only reflect things up to version 1.3 and no mention of version 1.4 and 1.5 changes. The really wierd part is (get this) in my bin folder, under debug and release are my version 1.5: exe files, pdb files, .resources file, .suo file and .csproj.user file! Each of those files is definitely version 1.5 because the date/time all jive with the version 1.5 I distributed to my customer, but my source file is definitely version 1.3 right down to the date/time on the file itself. Somehow what I'm missing is the source (insert panic cry here) I don't have any non-default setting in VS2003 and certainly don't remember doing anything dumb like discarding changes when I closed the solution so I'm baffled. FYI there isn't any third party source control involved or anything either, it's just a straight forward single computer/single developer development system. Has anyone else seen this behavior or have an idea of whether I'm totally screwed here? (Please no preaching about backups, yes I have a backup copy of the entire solution folder, but like most people I don't backup daily so that's not going to help me recover the last 15+ man hours of changes I've put in on this project). I'm mostly just baffled, how on earth could VS2003 have possibly compiled my files into version 1.5 objects and EXE's and somehow reverted back to version 1.3???? This seems impossible. Especially reverting back 2 versions. Oh whoa is me. crying in San Diego :((
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OK, I'm in a state of panic. I opened up a VS2003 (C# .NET) project I've been working on for several months now to start adding some features per users request. As I started entering my new methods/forms etc. I opened up my mainform in designer mode and to my horror realized that my main project has mysteriously reverted back to a version that's a month old. Two entire versions behind what it should be. Oh no says I, what's going on here? So I carefully tiptoe around and look at all the files in my project folder (time to abandon the little tweaks I've done in the last few minutes..I've halted everything right in the middle of an edit to figure out what's going on here) As a normal practice, I keep a set of comments at the top of my code (like most people) and sure enough, my comments only reflect things up to version 1.3 and no mention of version 1.4 and 1.5 changes. The really wierd part is (get this) in my bin folder, under debug and release are my version 1.5: exe files, pdb files, .resources file, .suo file and .csproj.user file! Each of those files is definitely version 1.5 because the date/time all jive with the version 1.5 I distributed to my customer, but my source file is definitely version 1.3 right down to the date/time on the file itself. Somehow what I'm missing is the source (insert panic cry here) I don't have any non-default setting in VS2003 and certainly don't remember doing anything dumb like discarding changes when I closed the solution so I'm baffled. FYI there isn't any third party source control involved or anything either, it's just a straight forward single computer/single developer development system. Has anyone else seen this behavior or have an idea of whether I'm totally screwed here? (Please no preaching about backups, yes I have a backup copy of the entire solution folder, but like most people I don't backup daily so that's not going to help me recover the last 15+ man hours of changes I've put in on this project). I'm mostly just baffled, how on earth could VS2003 have possibly compiled my files into version 1.5 objects and EXE's and somehow reverted back to version 1.3???? This seems impossible. Especially reverting back 2 versions. Oh whoa is me. crying in San Diego :((
You could try downloading Reflector and get some of your methods back from the .exe files (if you didn't obfuscate them too bad). Sorry, I don't have a link to Reflector on this PC, but it should be easy to find from Google. Scott -- modified at 18:17 Friday 19th May, 2006 Here is a link I found: Reflector[^]
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You could try downloading Reflector and get some of your methods back from the .exe files (if you didn't obfuscate them too bad). Sorry, I don't have a link to Reflector on this PC, but it should be easy to find from Google. Scott -- modified at 18:17 Friday 19th May, 2006 Here is a link I found: Reflector[^]
I found Reflector...thanks :) Wow, this might just do the trick. It's definitely a good start for me to compare my 1.3 code to what reflector gleens from 1.5! Matter of fact, what I'm looking at is pretty scary! I can't believe this much of my actual code can be disassembled from a release version of software! On the one hand maybe I'm lucky I'm using .NET but on the other hand, I'm not very crazy about sending out released versions of software that can be so easily reverse-engineered either! FWIW, I still haven't been able to figure out how this happened folks and as I said earlier, I'm not perfect, but I have been programming for a lot of years. If this could happen to me, it can happen to you! So back up often and don't learn the hard way like I did that VS might just decide to dump all your changes on you! Thanks again Scott, this was definitely a help.
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I found Reflector...thanks :) Wow, this might just do the trick. It's definitely a good start for me to compare my 1.3 code to what reflector gleens from 1.5! Matter of fact, what I'm looking at is pretty scary! I can't believe this much of my actual code can be disassembled from a release version of software! On the one hand maybe I'm lucky I'm using .NET but on the other hand, I'm not very crazy about sending out released versions of software that can be so easily reverse-engineered either! FWIW, I still haven't been able to figure out how this happened folks and as I said earlier, I'm not perfect, but I have been programming for a lot of years. If this could happen to me, it can happen to you! So back up often and don't learn the hard way like I did that VS might just decide to dump all your changes on you! Thanks again Scott, this was definitely a help.
I use Retrospect (not free) for automatic daily backups. I have 2 backup sets alternating each day so even if the file corrupts, I still can get to the one from the day before. These backups go to usb hard disk, then once in a while I burn a copy to DVD-RW disks and store it off site. I also use Subversion with TortoiseSVN (both free) for source code control so I can quickly compare versions and such. Good luck recovering your changes. Scott