[kalistan]

I have another issue. All game profiles have vanished and I am now left with a black empty screen which I can make new game profiles on, but I have lost all my previous entries. What has happened and how do I fix it?

[Al ex]

Hard to say. Magic Dosbox itself doesn’t erase anything, not even when you uninstall the app.

My best guess is that you’re using a cleaning tool, like e.g. Clean Master, and accidentally erased the MagicBox directory. These tools are extremely dangerous, because they tend to destroy directories they deem unnecessary. It has happened once in the past, I believe, when Cleam Master was the culprit. Therefore, MagicDosbox has a Backup function since the last update, to prevent complete data loss. That’s probably too late now for you, but a hint for the future. The backup has to be triggered manually, because the backup file can grow very large. An automated solution would probably piss of people with low internal storage. 😉

Another possibility would be data corruption on your sd card. But that’s highly unlikely, if everything else is still working.

On the off-chance you simply messed up your app settings: perhaps you have simply moved the default data location (check Global Settings in mDosbox). And check your internal sd drive, there should be a folder labelled “MagicBox”. inside, where your profile data is stored (in “Games/data”).

[admin]

Damn, this charges me more and more. Kalistan, please can you describe what you did before it vanished? please check whether the MagicBox folder is really empty – without “Data” folder. This folder is created with first added game. Or check how many hashed folders are inside.

I know two reasons when it happens

1. If you uninstall application – I never experienced this, but it happen to one guy. I have no details, but he probably he uninstalled app through google play. And seems google play or android cleaned MagicBox folder

2. System cleaner app – this is really serious problem. I tried contact developers of this app (will check name of this app in emails history). This app simply removes MagicBox folder.

Android recommends store applications settings/data or whatever inside special folder located /storage/Android/Data/…

But whatever I saved here is removed during app uninstallation, or after some time. This is reason why MagicBox folder is outside and stored in root of main storage or sdcard.

But damn, seems android and cleaner applications lead aggressive war against this workaround.

Exactly because of this was added backup system in last version. You can create full backup of your settings and send them to dropbox. You are prompted to do so after 7 days of last change. But this is too late seems…

Ah, damn, how to beat it?

[admin]

Reported cleaner app was “System cleaner”

It’s possible find many discussions about missing folder after cleaning process like here

I tried contact developers with question how can I defend mDosbox, but without luck. Who knows who is behind this app, they have contact form and I never received response.

Please do you use this app? or similar

[Al ex]

It’s not Google Play, I’m pretty sure about that. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled Magic Dosbox countless times through the Play Store, and this has never happened, not even once. Google Play leaves folders outside /Android/data intact, that’s why I go through my sd card’s file structure regularly to remove leftovers of uninstalled apps.
The only thing that might make a difference is Marshmallow. My Note 4 is still on Lollipop (5.1.1). But the Google Play app is the same, so I doubt this makes a difference.
Just imagine the consequences if it were otherwise: you uninstall a camera app, and all your photos are deleted? You uninstall your music player, and all your mp3 files are destroyed? No way such a behaviour would pass through any QA process.

So I still believe it’s a Clean Master. It’s useless, its only purpose is to collect user data, and it’s from Cheetah Mobile – this company is evil to the bone anyway. :-p

[admin]

Another reason may be problem with sdcard, but this is little chance. Disappeared any other files/folder from time to time?

[admin]

Another question is how to defend mDosbox settings? I am not sure whether spamming at each startup is good solution. I can start storing settings back to /Android/data. Settings will be safe for a while, but everything will be lost during uninstallation. This is bad. But maybe I can really decrease the timeout from 7 days to 1 day.

[kalistan]

Could you run through the process of backing up a game collection, so I don’t lose all the game configs again. By the way, I did have that Sweeper program on and I uninstalled it now. Once I have my collection backed up, how do I restore it? Thanks for your help…this is about the last question I have. Thanks again!

[admin]

Hi, no problem, you can have as many question as you want;) Btw, I merged your last topic with this one, because I think this should be here.

Please, was that sweeper program “Clean Master” or else?

And to restore. Let me first explain background. Magic Dosbox introduced first version of backup system in last version. It’s not perfect and next version will get more improvements. Magic Dosbox creates “MagicBox” folder on local storage and saves all settings there. Backup takes this folder and creates backup file in zip format. Backuping process excludes some folder like “Temp” or similar.

Currently there is no import functionality in program, because backup contains core files what can’t be replaced when program runs. This requires more sophistical restore functionality and I will work on that in the future.

Now, just download Total Commander, or something with unzip ability and unzip backup file somewhere. Then start Magic Dosbox. If you extracted this file to original location then Magic Dosbox finds these settings automatically. If you extracted file to another location then go to “Global settings” and update “Data directory”. Confirm and restart program.

[Al ex]

I bet it’s Clean Master… at least it’s the most popular cleaning app, and Cheetah do a lot to advertise this placebo crapware. The UI has lots of snappy animations, with turning wheels and launching rockets, but in effect, it does not make anything run any faster. It only deletes some random files and folders, and terminates some apps. So 95% of its “functionality” is pulling a show.

kalistan, if you’re looking for an efficient way to clean your phone, install Disk Usage to identify what’s clogging your sd card(s), then use its built-in delete function, or, if you need more precision, install a file manager to clean the junk manually (I’d suggest Solid Explorer or Total Commander).

[Author]

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