Lost the Project Folders

Recently I did a reformat of my hard drive and reinstall of XP SP2.
After the reinstall of Encore 2.0 (E2) I find that the project folders are all
missing. What I have is a series of files with the format xxx.ncor where xxx is
the project name. Altho E2 shows the listing of the 8 or so projects when I try
to open them it says "Can't find the Project Folder".

My couple of recent tests do generate a project folder with subfolders Cache
& Sources. I do not remember folders like that before. Is there some setting
that would have changed that process?

My real problem is that I would like to reuse some of the prior menus but can't
find them anywhere. Is there any way to recover them from the existing ncor
files?

Prior to the reformatting, did you do a full backup of that drive, say Ghost, or
similar? Encore builds several folders, per Project in the target folder. These
are searched for, when you go to load a Project. If you have the backup, copy
all of these folders to the appropriate folders on the drive. All should work
fine from there.

If you did not make a backup, about the only hope (and it is all
"hope") would be to use something like Stellar Phoenix NTFS to recover
the folders, should there still be a trace of them, after the reformatting. Last
resort would be to try an "unformat" of the drive, with the
appropriate software, and hope (there's that word again), that you'll find them.
Otherwise, this is an expensive lesson (time wise) learned, as you'll have to
start each Project from scratch.

If you do try either the recovery, or unformat route, do NOT add anything,
except the necessary SW to the drive. If it were my situation, I'd pick up a new
drive, set it up with the OS, and the recovery SW only, wire your old drive as
D:\ (whatever), boot from your new C:\ and run the utilities. You may get lucky,
but probably not. Anyway, one can always use extra HDD space with NLEs, so it
will not be a total waste, to get the new HDD.

Good luck,

Bill, Thanks for your response.
I probably did not describe my dilemma well enough. Yes I did reformat the drive
(C) with the OS on it. But I had (I thought) saved my Encore projects on my D
drive which I did not reformat. Because of this and since I saw the XXX.ncor
files saved I did not make any further attempt to back them up.

Do you know, or can you direct me to where Encore stores various files?
If the project files had been saved to the D drive could you describe how the
folders might have been deleted when the C was reformatted?

Since I restarted with Encore, it seems that the full folders have been created
when I did a project save. Is there some way to have Project Folders in one
location and a ncor file in another?

BTW fortunately, I ran across a menu psd file that had 90% of the menu that I
was trying to use. But that brings another question to mind. When working in
Encore and then "Edit Menu in PhotoShop" when I do a subsequent save
in PhotoShop sometimes the saves do not transfer back into Encore. Can you help
me with that? The scheme of renaming the menu files seems somehow hidden.

Thanks again!

Harold,

I am at the laptop, while Encore does a multi-disk Burn, but will check out the
full file structure and look at Preferences. I do not want to try to do this
from memory, but will report back.

I cannont imagine how the folders, Moved (or Copied) to D:\ could be affected,
in any way, by a reformat of C:\

Now, for your PS question, take a look at:
<http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c05a3cd/2>

I've been through a similar situation. For a good long time, all seemed to work,
as I had expected, until recently. In my case, I made a "template"
Project, that I then re-name into a new location and Import new Assets, edit
Menus, etc. In that case, I got the problem of Encore NOT updating the edited
Menus. The workaround that I have found to work, is do multiple Saves, as you
work in PS. After two (seems to be the magic number), things work, as they are
supposed to.

Harold,

Here is the file structure for my "DVD Encore Template" Project:

Project Root Folder: [DVD Encore Template] i	DVD Encore Template.ncor
b	Folder: DVD Encore Template
i		ProjectPrefs2.xml
i		ProjectWorkSpace.xml
b		Folder: Cache
i			mlf.cache.v7
b			Folder: Media Cache Files
i				Mlf.cache.MACC
b		Folder: Sources
b			Folder: Menus

I hope that this helps you. This is the structure that EncoreDVD 2 sets up, when
you start a new Project. In my case the Project was named: DVD Encore Template
and it was set up on my H:\ drive in my client's folder. If you need any
additional info, let me know.

As for the Preferences (Edit>Preferences>General), the only reference to
an folder structure was for the Library items.

Hunt