Saving winamp history

[TV1991]

I recently rebuild my PC, throwing out all of my old parts - and that included a fresh install of a new Windows OS. Now, before, I had been using Winamp on this machine for at least 5 years. However, upon re-installing Winamp on my new PC, I realized that in the progress I lost all of my play history - which songs I'd played the most, rated the highest, playlists, that sort of things. Is this data (like the amount a song is played, which songs were never played, etc) saved anywhere? If so, can it be moved over to a new installation of winamp to save this data?

[NJK]

yes that data was saved on your HD in the winamp folder
if you installed a new OS it means all was lost that was on the HD.

[TV1991]

I installed Windows on a new SSD, and still have the old HDD with the old OS. Where would the info be stored?

[NJK]

you could try to copy the winamp folder from the old HD to the new HD.

it should be in the program files.

[TV1991]

Merci. I'll take a look!

[The1_Freeman]

Do also have a look in %APPDATA%\Winamp on that old HDD, that's where some other info like bookmarks, ML data is stored iirc.

[TV1991]

Originally Posted by The1_Freeman

Do also have a look in %APPDATA%\Winamp on that old HDD, that's where some other info like bookmarks, ML data is stored iirc.

This worked! Replacing the new Winamp folder in the appdata with the old one brought everything back, from top rated to times played. Thank you so much!

[TV1991]

Ah, maybe I spoke too soon. While the entire history, ratings and play count is now saved, Winamp can no longer find the song paths.

[NJK]

bring the music back on the new HD in the same folder as it was on the old HD

[Amplifiction]

Sorry to necro, but this was the top result for me when Googling. I just wanted to add that Winamp Backup Tool is also an option. It pretty much does what the name implies, and does a good job of it.

(Like OP, I have reinstalled my OS and was therefore looking for the path mentioned in one of the above answers. I then remembered this tool.)

As for OP's/my specific case, as long as you have your old installation on a HDD, (or a mounted image of it) you can manually point the Backup Tool to both your old install folder as well as the appdata folder. (The latter requires checking an advanced options box.)

I am unaware of an official (project) website, but got my copy of the Backup Tool at Major Geeks.

Good luck and keep rocking those MP3's, you old geezers.

[seventieslord]

Hi there, I thought this might be the best place to post this rather than in its own thread.

I know how the winamp history works and where the files are found, and how to transfer them over in order to maintain continuity following a fresh install of windows. Which means I have years and years of history.

BUT - my PC crashed and I forced it to restart. Winamp was open at the time, and I guess it didn't like that, because now when I open winamp, my history is three lines of chinese characters, and there's a button at the bottom that reads "Reset Database". I really, really, really do not want to do this.

On one other occasion in the past, I was able to restore a previous version through right clicking on recent.idx and recent.dat, going to the previous versions tab and finding one three days old. But today, there are no previous versions showing.

Has anyone ever had success restoring a database that appeared corrupted?

[seventieslord]

Originally Posted by seventieslord

Hi there, I thought this might be the best place to post this rather than in its own thread.

I know how the winamp history works and where the files are found, and how to transfer them over in order to maintain continuity following a fresh install of windows. Which means I have years and years of history.

BUT - my PC crashed and I forced it to restart. Winamp was open at the time, and I guess it didn't like that, because now when I open winamp, my history is three lines of chinese characters, and there's a button at the bottom that reads "Reset Database". I really, really, really do not want to do this.

On one other occasion in the past, I was able to restore a previous version through right clicking on recent.idx and recent.dat, going to the previous versions tab and finding one three days old. But today, there are no previous versions showing.

Has anyone ever had success restoring a database that appeared corrupted?

Just to expand on this:

I've found a handful of posts from over the past decade where it's been said that if you don't have a backup, then your database is screwed. But a decade is a long time. Perhaps someone's figured something out in the meantime. Maybe there's a good .dat/.idx reader/editor that can view and/or fix these files, or something. I don't know, just thinking out loud.

I really want these files back. I've tried a few undelete programs. The most thorough one I have tried is a freeware program called TestDisk. The downside is it's all a text-based interface (like you're in the DOS prompt screen). I'm paging through thousands of pages looking for anything .idx or .dat. There's no way to search or filter the results so it's tedious. But it's worth it if I can find my files.

...but will I ever find my files? Maybe someone with deeper understanding of how winamp operates behind the scenes will be able to shed some light on this. What i'm getting at is, is there a chance that this data still exists on my hard drive?

I have 65GB free on this drive and have made sure not to write any data to it in the meantime, aside from what can't be helped (like browing the net for solutions, downloading undelete programs, etc). So there's reason to believe it's there, somewhere.

But, when Winamp saves a new version of recent.dat, does it physically overwrite the exact sectors which contain the old recent.idx? or does it save it in other sectors and the space that held the old version becomes "free" space waiting to be overwritten by someone else?

That's an important thing to know. Because if it's constantly overwriting the exact same physical space, then no old, stable versions of my files exist anymore. But if it's repeatedly using new space while leaving existing files alone, then these old versions may be able to be found.