My Act keeps reseting and I loose my preferences

[Mongoose501]

Thanks for all this great help.  I did everything suggested and so far so good.  I'll write again if the problem comes back.

[Mongoose501]

Arg-g-g-g!  It reset again today!!!  I did all the things in regards to deleting preferences AGAIN and will now have to go through the customization one more time.  Something I noticed.  When asked to run %appdata% and go to the ACT folder, I notice I still have folders for ACT7 and ACT 8 in addition to ACT10.  Do I need any of the stuff in the ACT7 or ACT8 folders since updating to ACT 10, or should I get rid of that stuff too?  Can I use the Add/Remove Programs function in the Control Panel?

[GLComputing]

After setting up all the preferences, make a copy of the preferences xml file.

Then, if it happens again, it's a very quick fix to restore the file

The trick of setting preferences, then copying uspreferences206.xml to the act directory as preferences.xml works great.

uspreferences206.xml is in documents and settings\username\application data\act\act for windows 9\preferences

*replace us for eu or au if not in North America

You should copy it to c:\program files\act\act for windows\preferences.xml

* Keep a copy of the original preferences.xml file incase you have a problem

These paths assume act 9, and defaults locations, the concept is the same for other versions.  What this does is, when the preferences blow up, act reads the preferences.xml from it's directory, but since they are all set, everything works normally.  The one caveat is, the first time you open act after the preferences die, addons will not load, but all subsequent loads work fine.

Note: this won't save customized menus/toolbars, but will keep email and word processor, etc settings. The menus/toolbars can be backed up seperately