After Toad crashes or is unexpectedly shut down, connection history and passwords are lost when re-opening Toad. (4316286)

After Toad crashes or is unexpectedly shut down, when Toad is restarted, the connection information is gone.  All the saved connections and their passwords are no longer there.

A message may be given, noting that the "connectionspwds.ini file was invalid and it cannot be shared among different users for security reasons". This may or may not be followed by other messages regarding settings. Toad's connection window is blank and does not list out the previous connection history. 

It appears the file may have become corrupt.

Can this be prevented? Can the information be recovered?

WORKAROUND #1:

It may be possible to recover some settings from an older version of Toad. To check this, go to Utilities | Copy User Settings | Select 'Copy user files from a previous installation'. Toad will restart and replace any current settings with those from the older version selected.

WORKAROUND #2:

It may be possible to recover settings by using the Windows restore feature.  If Windows had created a restore point that is not too far in the past, it can be used to restore the machine Toad is on and get the settings and saved connections back.

STATUS:

This issue is fixed in Toad for Oracle 12.9. This version can be downloaded from the downloads section of our website, which you can access by clicking here.

To recover from future incidents, use the 'Copy User Settings' utility to make regular backups of the 'User Files' folder.

Go to Utilities | Copy User Settings | Select 'Export' from 'Import or export a Toad settings file' and select a location other than the default e.g. desktop

This utility can then be used to import the exported zip file in the event of your settings being lost.