Visual Studio project not saved

Question

Somebody please tell me it is possible to recover Visual Studio source after VS crashes!

I have just spent 5 hours writing a new utility app, and running it with the "Save before Build" option turned on, as well as AutoRecover every 5-mins. But after VS crashed I am unabled to find anything other than an empty project folder!!! I can't believe that files are only "saved" to memory?!? That can't be right! That 5 hours of work has to be somewhere on the disk?

I attempted to reproduce the scenario by creating a Junk project, running it, and then killing VS using Task Manager. It wasn't quite the same situation as a dialog box actually popped up asking to save the project. I ignored this and continued the kill. I was then able to find the Junk source in C:\Users{Username}\AppData\Local\Temporary Projects as advised - but not my earlier project.

I think it's gone.

Answer 1

Until you actually hit save solution, the project is saved in a temporary directory. This allows you to create quick scratch projects and not clutter up your projects folder. Hopefully it hasn't been cleaned up yet, but if not, it will be in you application data directory. On Vista, that is

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

Sorry, I forget what that was on XP.

Moral of the story, if it's not a scratch project, save the project early.