Lost all my settings after power loss

tauriel01 · April 2022

Hope someone here has the magic answer. Was playing just a bit ago. Randomly lost power. When it finally came back, I try to log in and alllll my settings are like I just installed the game. All the user agreements, which server did i want, it asked me what country i am in, etc. Then when i get in game, no addons (tho all still installed/enabled, but i did have to agree to some addon agreement), all the user preferences are set to default, etc and so forth. Some settings were not lost tho. Stuff like keyboard settings, text color settings--these are all ok. A reload UI after ok'ing the addon agreement added some of the features back, but again, all those addons seem to have default settings--not mine. The usersettings doc in my live folder has a time stamp of today (tho i didnt look at the time before i changed the opening cinematic setting). I haven't the faintest idea how to get my game back to what it was before the effing power company failed me ... again. Is all hope lost or is there something easier than logging into each toon (on two accounts) and resetting ALL my settings?

fizl101 · April 2022

Sounds like the pc equivalent of the local save file has been corrupted or lost. On PS if we delete the local save file we have to redo our settings and so on

essi2 · April 2022

Sounds like the ini file got nuked when the power was lost.

code65536 · April 2022

Nothing you can do about it. In the future, get a UPS backup so this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

When a program (this is not an ESO thing--can be any program) writes a file (e.g., the settings file or your addons' saved data) to disk, it doesn't immediately get physically written to the disk. The OS will have a file system cache in system memory, and that's where it's written to, and then OS will flush that data to the disk when it gets a chance. And then once it's flushed to the disk, it's still not written, since most disks have a cache of their own.

The problem with these caches--the OS file system cache and the disk's own internal cache--is that they're usually volatile. If power is cut, the stuff inside is lost. These caches are pretty important for performance and help responsiveness a lot, but in the event of an unexpected power loss, they can and often do result in lost or corrupted data.

Losing ESO settings are largely an inconvenience, but there can potentially be worse things to lose, which is the main argument for having a backup power source.

Ilumia · April 2022

This sucks, I am sorry for you. It definitely sounds like a corrupted ini file. I should really go back my savedvariables folder up again.
If you have lost addon data too - for instance from harvestmap or some of the trader addons, there are discords with files you can download and copy into your folder.
But going through all addon settings again is no fun, I don't even think I could remember what things used to be set to

xaraan · April 2022

This can happen to the local file when you lose power and the application is open, not so much an ESO issue as a PC one I think.

Happened to me long ago. After that, I always drag a copy of my settings file and add on settings file onto my back up harddrive to keep a copy of them in case it happens again.

Smaxx · April 2022

Set everything the way you want it, then go to "Documents" and look for "Elder Scrolls Online". In there you'll find a folder "live" (ignore "liveeu", even if it's in there and you're from the EU) and open it.

Look for a file "UserSettings.txt". Create a backup somewhere else. If you're losing your settings (or you want to restore them), just copy the file back, overwriting the existing file.

If you want to backup your addon settings, too, backup the sub folder "AddonSettings".

Jack-0 · April 2022

Go to the folder that contains the folder called live (e.g. C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online) and right click on the live folder. Select properties next, and then go to the tab called previous versions. If you're in luck your computer will have been backing up the live folder, you can find an earlier version of your missing files by selecting an earlier folder from the list and then clicking the open button at the bottom of the list. Copy that version of your usersettings.txt and addonsettings.txt to your current live folder, and do the same with the SavedVariables folder, and maybe you won't have to re-do too many of your settings.

Good luck