Back to Factory Settings and won't come back!

I was working in Audacity when the battery died on my computer. When I restarted the computer, Audacity had gone back to what looks like factory settings. All my plugins and keyboard stroke settings were gone. I have reinstalled multiple versions of Audacity, restarted my computer multiple times and tried to re-instal plugins to no avail. Oddly, my user presets in Amplify are still there but everything else is gone, including some of the pre-loaded effects, like Filter Curve. Gone. I tried to enable it in “add/remove plugins” and it won’t come back.
I’m using Windows 10.

It sounds like the Audacity settings files may have been partially corrupted due to the loss of power while open.

I think the best bet will be to fully reset Audacity back to factory defaults, then add back any customisations.

To reset Audacity, you need to shut down Audacity, then open (in the Windows File Manager) the hidden folder:

C:\Users\<your user name>\Application Data\audacity\

and delete the three files:

  • audacity.cfg
  • pluginregistry.cfg
  • pluginsettings.cfg

When you restart Audacity you should see the “Welcome” screen.

For future reference, once you have got you settings back to how you like them you may want to take a backup copy of the three files that Steve mentioned

  • audacity.cfg
  • pluginregistry.cfg
  • pluginsettings.cfg

Note that in Keyboard preferences you can Export you settings including custom settings and re-Import the,

And with the upcoming 3.0.0 you will be able to do the same with Macros (if you have any).

WC