Scenes, sources, filters vanishing into thin air

[MicaLovesKPOP]

Operating System Info

Windows 11

Other OS

No response

OBS Studio Version

30.1.2

OBS Studio Version (Other)

No response

OBS Studio Log URL

https://obsproject.com/logs/9SQ8s1AZtw27PKPR

OBS Studio Crash Log URL

No response

Expected Behavior

Nothing (just OBS launching and loading my saved profiles as usual)

Current Behavior

My Scenes, sources, filters and scene transitions vanished. My audio mixer sources are still there. My OBS Settings are still there.

It seems the .JSON (attached below) got practically reset when I launched OBS today, though it is still twice much larger in file size than a newly created one.
Assetto Corsa.json

Steps to Reproduce

1. Likely changing GPU and/or reinstalling Windows
2. Start OBS and let it load the .JSON

Anything else we should know?

I've ran into this issue twice before, the first time was in 2014. Every time I stop using OBS and then years later return to OBS, only to find out that this honestly terrible issue still persists. I hope by personally reporting it, it can finally get squashed now.

[RytoEX]

Did you have other scene collection files present in your userdata when this happened? What do you mean "re-installing Windows"? Did you back up your OBS settings, reinstall Windows, then reinstall OBS, and copy your OBS settings back after that?

We've had rare reports of this, and we have tried many times to reproduce this, but we have never been able to see it occur ourselves.

though it is still twice much larger in file size than a newly created one.

It's twice as large as a newly created scene collection JSON because the default OBS scene collection (Untitled, Untitled.json) has two default audio sources: Desktop Audio and Mic/Auxiliary Audio. Newly created scene collections in OBS do not. In any case, it's not relevant to the core issue here.

If you have any backed up userdata (scene collection, ini/config files), it might be helpful for us to examine it.

Additionally, is this the very first log from when this happened? Or did you open OBS, notice the issue, then close and reload it? Did you take any other actions after noticing the issue? Ideally, we want the very first OBS log from when this occurs.