⚠ Poker Stars Notes & Color-coding backup. This is important! ⚠

[alienat3d]

Hello folks!

I want to tell you a short story that happened to me lately, that totally convinced me of the importance of doing backup for Poker Stars Notes & Color-coding. (If you haven't know you can do this, yes you can!)

Well, about 3 months ago I've bought a new fast SSD for my Desktop PC to boost up the things a little bit. Obviously, I needed to install everything completely new on it. After I did it and started my Poker Stars client I have quickly realized that all my color-coding and notes were gone! Luckily I haven't delete my old client from the old HDD, where it was before at.

I logged in and it was still there. Then I've made some searches and found this page:
https://www.pokerstars.com/help/articles/notes-xfer-from-old-comp/7832/

Also maybe it will be interesting for you to read this article, if notes not saving properly:
https://www.pokerstars.com/help/articles/lost-notes-file-req-init/7836/

Well, I did everything, as it's written at the first article and copied two files from there, which are important:

• notes.Alienat3d.xml (obviously it will be your ID after "notes." - this file contains notes and color-coding marks)
• user.ini (the file contains all of the settings changed at old client, so you don't have to do the whole work again)

After I copied it in the same folder on new SSD and imported my notes, as it's written at 1st article, everything came back and looked like it has been before!

But some weeks ago my Windows suddenly had a critical error, right in the middle of my poker session! I couldn't do anything, it just dead-freezed, so I had to restart it with the power button (long pressing it). Which means totally incorrect quitting out of client obviously.

To my surprise, when I started my PokerStars Client after that, it looked like if it was fresh installed. No colors, no notes all the settings are messed.:hmmmm:
I did instantly remembered about those two files I copied 2,5 months ago and I gave it a try.
So I just copied again and imported notes and everything was back again.

Although I still lost all my color-codes from the last 2 weeks, as I haven't back up them but it's just a small loss, compared to what disaster it could be if I had no any backups of those files and it was all gone! :icon_pale

So now I'm going to back up both of those files every week and I highly recommend you do so too.

I hope it helps. :tee:

P.S. After that Windows crash, all other poker rooms, that been running together with PS (888, Party, Titan Poker), as I noted looked still fine. All notes and color-codes still been there. Also, nothing changed in settings. So it seems to me, that they saving it probably on their servers, while Poker Stars trying to spare space and let it saving only on your computer. Is Poker Stars so poor and their servers so small, that can't afford to buy a bigger server for daily back up of those few Kilobytes per each player for his notes and color-codes and settings?! Seriously? Hard to believe! :icon_scra

 

[LuisBoaC]

I recently installed an SSD too. I was concerned about my HM2 stacks so backed them up externally. But to install the new drive I just cloned the old one onto it, shoved it in and saw it worked perfectly, exactly as before but faster.
This may be another way for people to avoid the problem you encountered

 

[alienat3d]

I recently installed an SSD too. I was concerned about my HM2 stacks so backed them up externally. But to install the new drive I just cloned the old one onto it, shoved it in and saw it worked perfectly, exactly as before but faster.
This may be another way for people to avoid the problem you encountered

Yeah, I know that I could clone the whole HDD to SSD, but I didn't with purpose.
Well, this method has advantages and disadvantages too. Advantages are obvious - it's fast to do and no headache afterward to install everything and setting up.
But the problem with this method and why I didn't do that is Windows itself.

Probably every Windows User noticed, that his computer does work slower and slower with every year (if not half year), there are coming more and more weird errors and unwanted stuff, that you hardly can explain, where it came from and how to fix it. Even if you're scrupulous do maintenance of your OS like defragmentation, cleaning registry and trash/temporary files. If your Windows OS older than 1-1,5 years it won't work as good, as it did at the beginning.
I can't explain this, but it's a fact, that I noticed over many years.
And the best boost you can give to your PC, if not upgrading hardware - is simply clean install of your Windows OS. It really helps a lot.

In my case I didn't make it over 2 years, so I had no doubt, that if I bought a new SSD, I'd rather install fresh OS.

P.S. And this the reason why MacOS, linux or OS/2 are way much better. You can run them for years and they don't get slower and buggy. Unfortunately MacOS are real expensive and there are no poker rooms, that I know are running under Linux or OS/2, except using virtual machine with Windows on it, but it's plain bullshit. You don't really winning anything by that, just losing even more resources.

 

[LuisBoaC]

I absolutely understand. I went for the simple/lazy option but am sure reinstalling the OS would give the best results.

 

[ChickenArise]

Something to note if you arent aware already. Coming from HDD you may be used to defragging your disk drive from time to time as maintenance.

SSD drives are NEVER to be defragged.

 

[LuisBoaC]

Something to note if you arent aware already. Coming from HDD you may be used to defragging your disk drive from time to time as maintenance.

SSD drives are NEVER to be defragged.

Didn't know this - thanks!

 

[BlackJesus]

If u restart your computer without logging off/quitting pokerstars, pokerstars deletes all favorites - that I knew for sure.
Sadly, your story indicates favorites are not the only thing that gets deleted in such case.
Probably it's not widely known, but yes - pokerstars that has "the best" software have such unnecessary issue. Do not restart computer not logging off poker room. But sometimes - you have to...