I need urgent help please, I was listening to a song I was working on and the app crashed.
I wasn’t worried since the automatic system recovered the file as usual but when I tried to recover it it opened the file twice and told me it was “already open in another window” and proceeded to close both windows deleting the file, I’m on windows 11 is there anything I can do?
I found it using EaseUs recovery wizard but I don’t have 70 euros for a monthly subscription
Did you re-start your computer so that the system “forgets” the not properly closed file?I am asking because the system complains about the file being already open.
For Windows, there is a utility to repair damaged files, but since I do not use Windows, I cannot say more. You should probably ask @evilmrb - he seems to be the expert for such situations.
I haven’t restarted the computer
That seems really expensive to me. Are you certain that the file is deleted as far as Windows is concerned? For data recovery I swear by a program called GetDataBack by Runtime Software. I’ve used it successfully a few times. The beauty of it is that you can install it for free and do a trial run of a recovery to see if it would work. You only pay the $79 licence fee if you want to do a recovery for real. I’m sure there must be something free that will do what you need. Maybe this list has something: Free Recovery tools. When I read the list I remembered I’ve used PhotoRec too for recovering images from an SD card. You don’t have to use a CLI. In the download there is a GUI version called QPhotoRec. Despite the name, it’s NOT just for photos.
You are very kind but I think perhaps I don’t qualify as an expert. I have had a lot of success with the project tools though on behalf of other people. 
Unless I misunderstood, I think the person has lost the file altogether rather than it being broken.
Ok so I’ve found the file(s) but it doesn’t open in any way, they’re in three formats:
AUP3UNSAVED-WAL, AUP3UNSAVED and AUP3UNSAVED-SHM .
I’ve already tried installing FFmpeg and importing them from the raw data section but nothing seems to work
The WAL & SHM are Audacity’s own temporary files. I think they usually vanish when a project is closed/saved. How big is the other one?
About 320kb
Oh dear, that’s nowhere near big enough to be a ‘proper’ project file. I have some more questions:
1-Idk about the version, I downloaded it about two months ago so I think it’s pretty recent
2-The song is something I wrote for a project and I had completed the first two minutes with all the guitars, bass, percussions, drums, and vocals
3-And I’ve already checked for aup3 but it’s nowhere to be found sadly
We’ve resorted to just recording the song again from scratch since we remember all of it and we laid down bass and some guitars already, thanks for helping 
Excellent. I’m glad there was some kind of positive outcome for you. I can’t help thinking you need a proper DAW for what you are doing. This link to another of my posts might help: possible DAW choices.
There’s a Red Flag. Audacity crashes constantly?
That’s working yourself into a corner. You can’t restart the computer because that would damage any backups the system may have. You may need to restart to clear out any system damage from creating any further crashes
Your instability may be from running out of room. It can be from both system memory and/or hard drive space. We recommend strongly that you use only the machine’s internal drive and not external , network, or internet for production.
You have a complex show. Each time you make a change or edit, Audacity makes a protection copy of the whole show. If you make a mistake and have to back up, Audacity doesn’t try to unscramble the last edit, it just plays back the show before this one. That can get big in a hurry.
Straight, ordinary Windows Restart or Shutdown is not recommended when you have deep problems like this. You should perform a Clean Shutdown. That takes longer, but it resets and cleans more things.
Koz
The new Audacity versions in the 3.7.x series have been creating some serious stability issues. That could be complicating your production effort. I’m bringing a fresh new machine on-line with Audacity 3.6.2.
There are some rules to back up your versions if you want to try that.
Koz
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.