Well this is my first blog post ever here on the Giant Bomb (and anywhere else).

Steam had been acting up lately and therefore I thought it would be a good idea to reïnstall the bastard.
Just before clicking the uninstall button in the W7 control pannel I thought to myself "hmm maybe I should make a backup of my Super Meat Boy save" (only game not supported by Steam Cloud, which I knew), but assuming that uninstalling Steam would not remove my games I just went ahead and clicked uninstall.

During the course of Steam uninstalling I started to get nervous when seeing how long it took Steam to uninstall, such a small program couldn't possible take that long unless it was taking all of my games with it. It would be an understatement to say that my armpits were not miniature steaming hot versions of the Niagara Falls.

Quickly heading over to /Program Files (86x)/ I found that my Steam folder was completely gone. "OMFG WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE GAME FOLDERS" I thought to myself.
Quickly I headed over to Google and searched where Super Meat Boy kept its safe file, and to my greatest horror I found out it was located in the SMB folder in the Steam folder (not all Steam games have their save files there). It was gone... Hours of fun, achievement, irritation, agitation, anger, tears, and blood; all gone. I tried Googling a possible solution to this by people who had experienced something similar, but I couldn't find any!

Being the kind of person that I am (the one that does not give up very fast, pretty much the target group of SMB) I hopelessly try to find a way to get my save file back.
I do a System Recovery; Steam is back and so is the Super Meat Boy folder but the User Data folder (which contains the saves) isn't there. I install SMB via Steam again and open it up hoping for a miracle, to see all the hard work I put in this game still there... Seeing Meat Boy standing on World 1 and all other Worlds locked made me want to hang myself (NO NO not literally I'm not that kind of person).

Desperately I try another System Recovery, but the User Data folder is still nowhere to be seen. So I start my last desperate struggle before losing total hope. I open Super Meat Boy and close it again (creates a new User Data folder). Right click the User Data folder and click "Restore previous versions" (A function which Windows 7 has). I only see versions of 20-5-2011 (the day this happened), however I see one at a very early time at which this fiasco had not happened yet, a sparkle of hope lighted up in my heart. I copy it, replace the new User Data folder with it, open Meat Boy and VICTORRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY; All of my progress is back again as if nothing had happened.

God DAMN I was (still am) so happy, and now I can continue my life as if nothing had happened.

I'm not the best Super Meat Boy player at all, I have completed the Light World A+ and am half way through the Dark World A+ (dieing bazillions of times). But I absolutely LOVE the game, and to me that was a lot of work to just lose!

/giantblog

Well this is my first blog post ever here on the Giant Bomb (and anywhere else).

Steam had been acting up lately and therefore I thought it would be a good idea to reïnstall the bastard.
Just before clicking the uninstall button in the W7 control pannel I thought to myself "hmm maybe I should make a backup of my Super Meat Boy save" (only game not supported by Steam Cloud, which I knew), but assuming that uninstalling Steam would not remove my games I just went ahead and clicked uninstall.

During the course of Steam uninstalling I started to get nervous when seeing how long it took Steam to uninstall, such a small program couldn't possible take that long unless it was taking all of my games with it. It would be an understatement to say that my armpits were not miniature steaming hot versions of the Niagara Falls.

Quickly heading over to /Program Files (86x)/ I found that my Steam folder was completely gone. "OMFG WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE GAME FOLDERS" I thought to myself.
Quickly I headed over to Google and searched where Super Meat Boy kept its safe file, and to my greatest horror I found out it was located in the SMB folder in the Steam folder (not all Steam games have their save files there). It was gone... Hours of fun, achievement, irritation, agitation, anger, tears, and blood; all gone. I tried Googling a possible solution to this by people who had experienced something similar, but I couldn't find any!

Being the kind of person that I am (the one that does not give up very fast, pretty much the target group of SMB) I hopelessly try to find a way to get my save file back.
I do a System Recovery; Steam is back and so is the Super Meat Boy folder but the User Data folder (which contains the saves) isn't there. I install SMB via Steam again and open it up hoping for a miracle, to see all the hard work I put in this game still there... Seeing Meat Boy standing on World 1 and all other Worlds locked made me want to hang myself (NO NO not literally I'm not that kind of person).

Desperately I try another System Recovery, but the User Data folder is still nowhere to be seen. So I start my last desperate struggle before losing total hope. I open Super Meat Boy and close it again (creates a new User Data folder). Right click the User Data folder and click "Restore previous versions" (A function which Windows 7 has). I only see versions of 20-5-2011 (the day this happened), however I see one at a very early time at which this fiasco had not happened yet, a sparkle of hope lighted up in my heart. I copy it, replace the new User Data folder with it, open Meat Boy and VICTORRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY; All of my progress is back again as if nothing had happened.

God DAMN I was (still am) so happy, and now I can continue my life as if nothing had happened.

I'm not the best Super Meat Boy player at all, I have completed the Light World A+ and am half way through the Dark World A+ (dieing bazillions of times). But I absolutely LOVE the game, and to me that was a lot of work to just lose!

/giantblog

Oh man.... good to see a happy ending to that story. Losing all those bandages would be so demoralizing.

I'm glad that story had a happy ending! I did the same thing to my VVVVVVVVV save game, but alas I could not get it back.

Who, in 2011 (well, 2010) saves games by saving them to the flash cache? And only the flash cache!? It's madness!

That's good, but in the future there is software that can recover deleted files on windows even after you remove them from the recycle bin. They stay on the hard-drive until you overwrite that space, I've saved a lot of files like that before. 

That would've sucked to lose all that work, I'm glad you got your file back.

Wow, I didn't even know about the restore previous versions option for Windows 7. I just turned it on.

I'm glad that story had a happy ending! I did the same thing to my VVVVVVVVV save game, but alas I could not get it back.Who, in 2011 (well, 2010) saves games by saving them to the flash cache? And only the flash cache!? It's madness!

That's good, but in the future there is software that can recover deleted files on windows even after you remove them from the recycle bin. They stay on the hard-drive until you overwrite that space, I've saved a lot of files like that before. 

Wow, I didn't even know about the restore previous versions option for Windows 7. I just turned it on.

Ugh. I would have lost all drive to finish the game at that point. No thanks.

Wow, I didn't even know about the restore previous versions option for Windows 7. I just turned it on.

Ugh. I would have lost all drive to finish the game at that point. No thanks.

Close call :p Had no idea 7 had a restore previous versions oprion. Wish Ii'd known that, i've accidently deleted so many Word docs and had to write them again