Ableton Forum

Hi I just upgraded to Live 8 from 7. I had tons of custon Impulse and Simpler instruments that I saved over the years and they're crucial to me but they are now gone in Live 8.

Why??? How do I get them back???/

This is horrible.

Did you move the Library when you upgraded to Live 8?

I suspect that you accidentally installed a whole new library somewhere for L8.
You most likely have a new library in your local user area, such as (Windows) C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Ableton ... or something like that. I know apps love those kind of locations, unless you tell them otherwise.
Meanwhile your old library, may have been somewhere else althogether. It's hard to say from here.

Do a machine-wide search for something in the library "MIDI Effect Rack", for example. That should tell you where your two libraries are.


Note, you should always have backups of your library. I keep a local machine copy, and there are copies of those copies in my remote backup(!) Nothing exists in the digital world unless it exists 3 times. Human error is the biggest source of crucial files getting accidentally wiped out of existence.