I saved frequently. I debugged. I ran the project.
Overnight, windows updates (I am assuming) rebooted the system and, this morning – no more project. Gone. Nowhere (normal) to be seen. Apparently, I did not “save all” or save the project itself. So all that work and testing disappeared.
I googled. Nothing I found turned out to be helpful or if it seemed helpful, turned out to be untrue. I panicked! All that work gone – I saved!!! What the Funk!?!?!
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zainnab/archive/2010/06/30/autorecover-vstipenv0019.aspx <– No help.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh848072(v=vs.85).aspx <– No help.
https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download <– No help.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/saraford/archive/2008/02/14/did-you-know-where-visual-studio-saves-auto-recovered-files-in-the-case-of-an-unexpected-shutdown-151.aspx <– No help!!
“C:UsersMyUserIDDocumentsVisual Studio 2012Backup Files” had MyProject folder. It was empty.
I cursed and searched, and cursed and searched… and then I found it:
“\localhostc$UsersMyUserIDAppDataLocalTemporary ProjectsMyProject” – it was all there!
I copied the folder to my documents. Then I copied the folder to my visual basic projects folder and opened the solution file. It is all there! Whew!
Why the \localhostc$ ? Well, I am on windows 8.1 and the “Previous Versions” tab is gone from File Explorer, but you can get to it using UNC to your own machine. Silly, I know.
I hope this helps someone else find their hard work that a stupid thing from Microsoft caused them to loose.