What is the status of the system.use_app_data setting on the Options–>Advanced settings page? (Just read it to us, don’t touch it, for now.)
As I said, if you told us the value of this option we would know what your client’s setting is at present time.
If it’s FALSE then by setting it to TRUE, BitComet should automatically move all the configuration files from the VirtualStore to the APP_DATA folder.
As for the upgrading process, obviously, something went wrong in your case, otherwise you wouldn’t have lost your Task List.
Starting with Vista, Windows won’t allow any program to write in the system folders (Program Files being among them) unless it’s running in elevated privileges mode.
Since during normal operation most applications (BitComet included) don’t run in elevated mode when they try to write/read in the Program Files folder they will get redirected transparently to the VirtualStore\Program Files\ folder (that is the application doesn’t know that it’s not writing/reading in the real folder, and will be fooled into thinking that it works as is did before, in previous versions of Windows).
This is called the data virtualization feature of Windows and it’s part of the new User Account Control (UAC) system implemented in Windows, starting with Vista.
That’s why your files are in the VirtualStore folder; because there is where they should be under Vista.
The thing is that if you disable for whatever reason the UAC system in Vista, the data virtualization won’t work anymore and all programs will be able to write/read again in system folders (Program Files included).
The data virtualization feature was introduced in Vista as a means to make older applications (i.e. all applications which haven’t been updated as to be Vista-compatible) still work in the new operating system.
But Microsoft’s recommendation is to avoid trying to write in Program Files anymore, and use the alternate locations for storing configuration or data files created during normal operation.
I guess you can start to see what mess this can create on a user’s PC which unknowingly may switch off and on UAC, repeatedly.
We had to deal with endless complaints about lost tasklists and configuration files, and that’s why starting with v.1.18 the development team decided to use the %AppData%\BitComet folder for storing configuration files instead of leaving BitComet being redirected to the VirtualStore anymore.
They had to deal somehow though, with the zillion of users which already had older versions installed and for which and upgrade over the old version would have meant loosing all their configuration files (tasklist included).
That’s why they created this option system.use_app_data and decided that BitComet would first search for previous installations and if any was found it should keep the old configuration folders instead of using the App_Data folder (i.e. set the option to FALSE), to avoid any problems at installation time.
But if you manually change the value of the option from FALSE to TRUE, BitComet should move all the files from one place to another.
Now back to your case.
The problem you faced shouldn’t have happened. However, be aware that most probably your tasklist is not lost (at least that’s what I gather from your saying that you found the .torrent files in the VirtualStore location); it’s rather a problem of BitComet looking for them in the wrong location.
But in order to start figuring out which is what we’ll need to know:
What is the current state of the system.use_app_data option now (after upgrading)?
What was your BitComet version before upgrading?
Is your UAC on or off?
Was it on or off before and during the upgrade process?
