Show disappeared

[hcajones Profile Private message]

I am beginning to feel cursed. Or very stupid. I created and saved a show over several days. This morning, I burned it to a DVD. I was not happy with the DVD picture quality, and initiated a post about that. About 15 mintues ago, I went to re-open the show. When I click on "open," I end up in "Documents Library" which, as far as I can tell, has no ProShow folders in it at all. Up until now, when I have clicked on "Open," the link to the slideshow has popped right up. So based on advice I got earlier when the show got corrupted but didn't disappear, I went into Program Files and deleted the .cfg and .phd files, hoping that would regenerate the slideshow. Nothing. And no .psh file is listed there. So, once again, I am completely befuddled. By the way, I have a good quality computer and am not having problems in any other programs or applications.

[obeeone Profile Private message]

Hi

Have you done a search of your hard drive for the .psh file?

Carl

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

I am beginning to feel cursed. Or very stupid. I created and saved a show over several days. This morning, I burned it to a DVD. I was not happy with the DVD picture quality, and initiated a post about that. About 15 mintues ago, I went to re-open the show. When I click on "open," I end up in "Documents Library" which, as far as I can tell, has no ProShow folders in it at all. Up until now, when I have clicked on "Open," the link to the slideshow has popped right up. So based on advice I got earlier when the show got corrupted but didn't disappear, I went into Program Files and deleted the .cfg and .phd files, hoping that would regenerate the slideshow. Nothing. And no .psh file is listed there. So, once again, I am completely befuddled. By the way, I have a good quality computer and am not having problems in any other programs or applications.

Just a few comments, for you and for everybody else, like you, who reads this thread.
Deleting the files proshow.cfg and proshow.phd from the program directory, DOES NOT REGENERATE THE SLIDESHOW.
All it does, is to cause ProShow to revert to its defaults, and to refresh its memory of your computer and its directories.
Because you deleted these files, ProShow does not remember where was your last show, and while regenerating these files, it defaults to your Documents, because this is Windows' default.
You must remember where you save your shows and with what name, so that you may be able later to navigate your computer and to find them.

IF YOU ONLY WANT TO REGENERATE THE SHOW, it is enough to delete a file with the name:
Show name.pxc (show name is whatever you called your show. The extension of this file is pxc)
This file is usually quite large.
This deletion causes ProShow to recreate the cache of your show. When you next open ProShow, the program will recreate the cache. (this file).
Pay close attention NOT to delete files with the extension psh, because these files are your shows.

So, now, do you remember how you called your show? If you do, then as Carl mentioned above, you can search for it.

[debngar Profile Private message]

Going forward, along with the useful information already provided by Carl and Mona, I recommend creating a main folder for Proshow files under your document folder and each new show have its own sub folder beneath that where all its files ultimately wind up being collected and stored.

[hcajones Profile Private message]

I was out of town for a while and am now returning to trying to fix this problem. Thanks for the replies and suggestions. I can't get any of them to work. I did name the slideshow "Puerto Vallarta 1991." I've searched using each and all of those words, and lots of stuff turns up (I have several files relating to that trip), but the ProShow show never shows up. I've also searched using psh and .psh and proshow, but this slideshow never comes up. I thought I read somehwere that ProShow automatically creates a backup file every time you save a show, but I can't seem to find where I read that and I can't find anything on my computer that looks like a ProShow backup file. In the course of making the show I had saved numerous versions of it over time, so if backups were created you would think they would come up if I search proshow, but no.

I put many, many hours into creating this show (my first one on ProShow, so I had a steep learning curve), but more important, even though I really like ProShow, this show already corrupted once (you helped me restore it) and now it has disappeared entirely, so I am doubtful about continuing to use ProShow unless I can find the disappeared show.

Thanks.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Sorry for your problems - Proshow does indeed create backup files of your show. If you create a show called "myshow.psh", in the same folder as that show (where ever you put it), you will end up with "myshow.bak" as well as a number of "myshow.b0?" where the "?" is the numbers 0-9. Unless you specifically deleted those files, they are still on the hard drive somewhere (or were you working with a removable drive?). As Mona (and others) indicate the .cfg and .phd files do keep track of where you were working, but deleting them will not delete any of your actual show files. Unless you deleted the folder with the show you were working on in it, those files are still there on disk. If a search of your hard drive (all partitions if you have multiple partitions) for the ".psh" files does not turn up anything, it sounds like you must have had a removable drive or something you were working from. I have never heard of Proshow deleting the files (including the backup versions) before.

mikey

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Mikey beat me to the punch just as I was about to post this, but I'll post it anyway since, quite often, the same thing can be said twice but using different words, and it helps the light bulb turn on.

The backup files have these extensions: YourShowName.bak, YourShowName.b01,YourShowName.b02, and so forth up through .b09 (maybe more or less depending on how Preferences are set.

When doing a search, make sure to tell Windows to search absolutely everything everywhere. I refuse to believe the entire show and all its backups went up in smoke. In Windows Explorer, select "Computer" so the search looks at everything, and then type .b01 in the search box.

Barbara

[hcajones Profile Private message]

I have now done numerous searches of the entire C drive. Each search takes quite a while. I searached for .psh, .bak, .b04, and Vallarta (because I had named the show Puerto Vallarta 1991). The search returned lots of stuff for Vallarta because I have lots of stuff about that trip on my computer, but no files or folders related to ProShow. It also returned random files and folders which have, say, b04 or bak in the file or folder name, but it did not return any PSG folders or files.

I know I edited and saved this show at last four times before it disappeared, and probably several more times than that. When PSG creates a .bak backup file, does it wipe out the prevous backup file? Does .b04 wipe out .b03? If not, then I can't understand why I can't find .b04 even if subsequent files were somehow lost. But if each serial .bak file does wipe out the earlier backup files, then I guess I could find the only remaining backup file only if I knew exactly what number it was (.b05? .b06?), and I don't. But even if each new .bak file wipes out the previous versions, it seems I should be able to find it with the "Vallarta" search since that was part of the file name.

I am dead ended, and find it hard to imagine that I will create any more PSG shows since the only one I created first corrupted itself (which was repairable) but then completely disappeared.

I am wide open to and would be grateful for any additional suggestions, but at the moment I am completely stymied.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Unfortunately, the only things that come to mind is either a) you are looking under the wrong rock and the show was on a different partition (or external drive of some sort) or b) you somehow deleted the folder. I have never heard of a case where Proshow (Gold or Producer) would delete not only the .psh file for the show, but the cache file (.pxc) and all of the backups. The only way I know of to make them all vanish at the same time is to either delete the folder the show is in or it is in a different location than where you are looking. You didn't by chance have a USB flash drive plugged in that you were working from or something did you ?

mikey

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

If I understand what you've said, you've found no .psh files on your hard drive, which is an impossibility. There are .psh files installed with and by ProShow, and they absolutely must be there. If you're not finding any results for .psh, something is wrong with how you're searching.

Barbara

[hcajones Profile Private message]

Thanks, Barbara and Mikey.

I haven't had a thumb drive plugged in to this computer since long before I installed PSG. There is a remote hard drive plugged in to the computer, but I never work inside that for PSG or anything slse. I only use it to, on rare occasions, serve as a backup storage source, and I never used it for any PSG purpose.

Here is how I am searching. In Windows 7, I cick on Computer. I then click on OS(C:). At the top right of of the next page, I enter the search term into the search box, for example, .psh. I then wait - the search takes a long time. For the .psh search, I get quite a long list, but they are all files or folders that happen to have psh in the name, but none of those is a PSG, .psh-type file. No files appear that end with .psh

Is there a better/different way to search?

Thanks.

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

I imagine it makes no difference, but I always open Windows Explorer, and then select the drive or folder or whatever I want to search. In this case, it would be Local Disk (C:), and then I type my search terms into the box in the upper right. Since I work on all shows on my D: drive, if I were to do a search for .psh files, I'd click on that drive first and then enter the .psh in the search box.

In the final analysis, if you're doing the search correctly and on the correct drive, but you're finding nothing, then you must have deleted the show, not realizing this was what you were doing. If you haven't emptied your Recycle Bin lately, you might want to take a peek in there.

Barbara

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

Here is how I am searching. In Windows 7, I cick on Computer. I then click on OS(C:). At the top right of of the next page, I enter the search term into the search box, for example, .psh. I then wait - the search takes a long time. For the .psh search, I get quite a long list, but they are all files or folders that happen to have psh in the name, but none of those is a PSG, .psh-type file. No files appear that end with .psh
Is there a better/different way to search?
Thanks.

It's OK that you point your search to your computer, as you don't know for sure where you saved your files. But, in the search place, type in like this:

*.psh
This will get you only the files that have the extension .psh and nothing else.

Or, type in the following:
*.b??
This will get you only your backup files, those that have the extension .b01 to .b09

If you don't find anything when you search like this, then you'll know for sure that you have deleted the entire directory, as was suggested to you above.

[hcajones Profile Private message]

Thanks, again, for all the help. I will try Mona's suggestion about refining my search terms, but each of these searches takes a long time even though I have a high-end computer.

The consensus seems to be that if after all these searches I can't find the show, I must have somehow deleted it. And that gets to my big concern.

I edited it (several times), saved it, and then burned a DVD of it. The DVD was fine, although I wasn't happy with the picture quality. I cannot have deleted it before making the DVD or there would be no DVD. After I made the DVD, the next thing I did was to open PSG, but when I tried to open the show, it wasn't there. I don't think I could possibly have done anything to delete it, just as I did nothing to corrupt it earlier. I think something is going on that I am not causing, and that worries me. I am having no other issues with any program or application.

Thanks.

[heckydog Profile Private message]

In the future, if you don't have it turned on, you should turn on indexing. It will make your searches go a lot faster. You can access the Indexing options in your Control Panel.

If you did delete the show you could possibly try a recovery program if not too much has been overwritten on your hard drive. Here's a free one. http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Joe