"There was an error reading your user preferences. Preferences will be reset to factory defaults."

[hollister design Studio]

Why?

 

I get this error often - looking at my "VW crash log" it happened twice in October, three times in November and it just happened this morning.

 

VW then loads in "fundamentals" workspace and all my preferences are deleted.

 

At @Boh's recommendation I did a 'screen grab' record of my preferences and now it's a pretty smooth minute or two to get everything back working.

But before that I lost work (it always resets the number of backups to '1'... and I always missed that... until I needed a copy from earlier in the day.

 

 

Windows 11 version 21H2

VW 2022 at SP1.1 (since SP2 is broken for the plant tool)

32gb memory on a fast and up to date laptop.

I have my 'user data and preferences folder' set to a custom location (onedrive) so that it's backed up and available for all my computers.

 

[zoomer]

2 hours ago, hollister design Studio said:

VW then loads in "fundamentals" workspace and all my preferences are deleted.

 

 

Then I think your Settings and Workspace Files got so corrupt (*) that VW has a real problem

with it. I think the only reliable way ist to create all these from scratch !

 

Not only recreate Workspace by duplicating a suitable "clean" VW Workspace by VW

and VW Settings, but everything VW-ish inside your user Folder.

 

I assume that you may have migrated your Workspace and Settings over different VW versions,

like I do. That may be risky over time but I explicitly want to say that I don't think that you are

in charge of (*) above ....

[hollister design Studio]

Copy that.

 

Has anyone ever written a script that grabs all your keyboard shortcuts from a custom workspace and lists them in a text file?

That would be pretty handy!

 

[E|FA]

35 minutes ago, hollister design Studio said:

all your keyboard shortcuts from a custom workspace and lists them in a text file

Try Tools menu->Workspaces->Workspaces...->(select workspace)->Export

 

I also made a keyboard cheat sheet of my workspace, and update it when I change versions or tweak it.  Here's a screenshot of the draft.  I think I uploaded the source image files on another thread, but could do it again.

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by E|FA
keyboard screenshot

[hollister design Studio]

1 hour ago, E|FA said:

I also made a keyboard cheat sheet of my workspace,

Did you make that in Photoshop?

 

Thats a pretty good idea for those of us that are more visually oriented!

[E|FA]

Made in VW.  The file is attached.  I'm also attaching the icons (and miscellaneous other graphics) I pulled from the VW application package per another thread on the forum.

VW 2022 Keyboard DRAFT.vwx VW 2022 Icons.zip

[hollister design Studio]

Just had an 'error loading preferences' again... last one was three days ago. 

Seems like it's weekly now.

 

[Jeremy Best]

On 12/11/2021 at 7:49 AM, hollister design Studio said:

Just had an 'error loading preferences' again...

I would try having your Vectorworks Preferences saved in the default location for a while to see if that helps. It might be that OneDrive locks or is otherwise 'busy' with the folder at a time when Vectorworks is trying to read or write to it, resulting in that message. Do this test to find out. 

 

If the issue persists after this, I would do a clean installation of Vectorworks (use the dedicated Vectorworks, 'Uninstall' app found in the Vectorworks Program Folder) then install it again but be sure to following best practices, all of which are mentioned here, and do not introduce anything in the Settings or Workspaces subfolders until you're satisfied the issue has stopped.