Old projects in a new interface Windows 10

Hi there, I’ve seen some old topics similar, but I’m hoping there’s a newer way to get this to work. I had an old Yamaha firewire board and now I have 2 Arturias linked for 16 channels. I had a crash and updated windows from 7 to 10 and cubase from 8.5 to 11 so everything is a massive mess coming from backups. I’m going through directories and finding cprs & baks & sometimes the audio is with them and sometimes it’s not… driving me insane… The biggest problem is when i open the projects they have all the routing for the old interface and it all needs to be reset one channel at a time and the ins and outs are wrong. Sometimes the midi stuff doesn’t work. And I can’t figure that out yet either…

Is there a way to open a project in cubase 11 that keeps the new default settings somehow? This will save me many many hours. I have well over 150 projects, around 60 of them in one directory that are all helpfully called “untitled.” It’s just such a mess coming from the backups. Thoughts? Thanks!

Hi @Bob_Main,

Maybe you should first reinstall C8.5 ( re-importing your prefs) and make a save/export project, controling every project has his own folder, and make sure you choose the right options to get recorded and imported files in it.

Then reinstall C11 properly and it should load your old prefs
This of course suppose you took a few precaution before you upgrade win…
hope it helps…

Thanks! I might give that a try. I took no precautions. My new interface wouldn’t work on win7 so I rushed that installation too, and that totally messed up the folders. Then that computer completely crashed and I only had backups. Ugh, it’s just such a mess… Thanks for the idea!

Sorry for you man…
But you can make of this mess some good lessons !
1 - Save your prefs sometime, mainly by updates
2- Always create a project with its own folder
3-when all your system is clean and tuned make a whole disk backup with acronis or paragon or something like that and update it sometimes…
Courage, you’ll get all in !

Thanks again! Definitely learned #2 going forward! And I have full disk backups with Macrium, but that didn’t help because the Windows 10 install just messed too many things up. But I guess I’m wondering what the prefs part means exactly. I do have templates and settings saved, but when I open the old projects, it reverts to the old settings and routings no matter what I do. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It looks like I have to rebuild each project piece by piece, and it’s going to take months…

when i talk about prefs i mean keyboard shortcuts, and the rest, as windows positions, routing and all the little things you can tune in cubase, according it to your workflow.
You can save, theorically, that all with “profiles” files (in C11 and C12, before i don’t know)
all that functions are in lowest part of edit menu (3 last lines)
shortcuts
preferences
and profiles, including them both…
not very simple or very clear to edit, but you should quick get in…

For your projects you should not have to rebuilt everything, folowing the way i already indicate you…
At worst you should only loose a very few things, or nothing, from 8 to later versions.
It’s in menu: “files/save copy of project” or something like that (it’s in french here)
But you must reintall C8 to do it,
you can have several versions side by side…

I don’t reallyunderstand your window’s problems (or window’s installer of cubase problem ?) Maybe macrium problem…
With a suficient machine everything rules, so it’s here ! it’s a long time i had not such troubles, just following instructions and being patient…
Maybe save your disk and redo a clean install of win 10 or 7 update it, and reinstall your two versions of cubase… put the files where they was recorded initially, load and archive each project…
when loading old project, if files are missing, you have two options, seach them one by one or by folder…
should be less painly that rebuilt all your projects…
Have fun !!!

You know, I figured it out kind of. I put all of the directories (about 9 of them) full of the mess of wave files on the desktop, then when opening the projects it shows files are missing. I can just point the directory search at “desktop” and it finds the correct files amongst the mess. Each file must have correct metadata or something…

So now I just have to load the input and output presets for my new interface, and sometimes change a vst instrument for the midi parts (if the vst is missing because I don’t have some older ones anymore), then save the new project, and it’s all good. Quite happy with this so far.

The only thing now is getting the files all in their own newly saved directories so this never happens again. No luck on this part yet. I had to leave the studio soon after I discovered the fix, but I should be able to figure it out.

Just a bit of an update, it does not work perfectly. If a project has Audio_04_04 or whatever, it will sometimes grab a random 04_04, so I have to dig through the dates to find the correct files about half the time. I’ve been slowly doing this for half a year (I’ve been doing other things too…) and I’m almost done. One big time saver would be being able to highlight all the tracks and have them all go to ‘stereo out’ which I seem to have to do one at a time. It takes a while… Anyway, just thought I’d throw that out there… I’m still dumb, but getting smarter everyday I hope… Thanks for input!