FancyZones settings are lost after version upgrade

[incansvl]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.49.1

Running as admin

• Yes

Area(s) with issue?

FancyZones Editor

Steps to reproduce

I have PowerToys installed in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\PowerToys on a machine, which appears to be significant (symptoms are not the same on another machine with PT installed in the default location)

1. I was running 0.47.1
2. I used the built in update feature to update to 0.49.1
3. Unlike with previous versions, this update ran without warnings and 0.49.1 restarted correctly
4. My custom FancyZones settings have been lost, all I have are the default zone patterns
5. I tried un-installing and reinstalling PT from scratch (in the same location). This has worked in the past, but on this occasion the FancyZones settings seem to be lost forever.

Note:
I tried to add a bug report using the Report Bug function but although it says "A .zip file has been created on your desktop", there is no such file. I ran a system-wide search for zip files created today and there are none, so it seems this feature is failing. Could be relevant (file permissions?)

The behaviour is the same after the reinstall (still no bug report file)

In the UI, Administrator Mode says "Running as Administrator" and the "Restart as Administrator" option is greayed out. This is interesting as-

1. Always run as administrator is turned off
2. At no point have I selected to restart PT as admin, including after a clean reinstall

Again, I wonder if this is significant. Permissions / ID issues?

✔️ Expected Behavior

PT to continue to work as normal after the upgrade, retaining previous FZ settings.

❌ Actual Behavior

FZ settings lost (default zones only)

Other Software

No response

[franky920920]

I tried to add a bug report using the Report Bug function but although it says "A .zip file has been created on your desktop", there is no such file. I ran a system-wide search for zip files created today and there are none, so it seems this feature is failing. Could be relevant (file permissions?)

Seems like #12707 for this but this should be fixed in 0.47.
Can you try this: #12707 (comment) and see if you can get a report file?

cc: @mykhailopylyp FYI.

[incansvl]

I ran the BugReportTool manually as described in bugID #12707 and the zip file was created on the desktop as expected. So, it seems the bug reporter works, but is not found from the UI. Again maybe due to my non-std install location.

Anyway, report output attached-

PowerToysReport_2021-11-04-16-16-26.zip

[SeraphimaZykova]

Can you please clarify what do you mean when you say that FancyZones settings were lost? Do you have custom layouts in the editor or were they lost? Was the custom layout reset to the default priority grid layout? Are template layouts settings lost? Are FancyZones settings such as Zone behavior, Window behavior, etc. lost?

[incansvl]

Can you please clarify what do you mean when you say that FancyZones settings were lost? Do you have custom layouts in the editor or were they lost? Was the custom layout reset to the default priority grid layout? Are template layouts settings lost? Are FancyZones settings such as Zone behavior, Window behavior, etc. lost?

I had two custom layouts defined, named "centre" and "side". These disappeared after the upgrade. The layout editor contained only the 6 default layouts, and yes all 3 screens in my portrait-landscape-portrait (PLP) setup had reverted to the priority grid layout.

I generally run with the main (non layout) FZ options at the defaults, so while I did not see these change it's probably not surprising and may not tell us very much.

As I mentioned in the initial report, after the upgrade the Administrator mode status seemed to be a little weird, the UI said PT was running in Administrator mode, even though "Aways runs as administrtor" was off, and I had not selected to switch to admin mode. Reinstalling PT from scratch fixed that problem, but unlike similar issues with zone definitions disappearing in erlier versions of PT, this time the zone definitions did not reapper after uninstalling and reinstalling the program.

[SeraphimaZykova]

Thank you for the details! We'll investigate the issue.

[SeraphimaZykova]

Duplicate of #14782