t's a good scheme to back up your Audition 2.0 workspaces and preferences from time to time even if things are running well. To do so is quite simple.

1. Close Audition

2. Go to C:\Documents and settings\{yourusername}\Application Data\Adobe\Audition

3. You should see a folder named "2.0" - make a copy of the whole folder and its contents and call it "My last 2.0" [or whatever] using normal Windows procedures.

If you then want to reset your preferences to the "factory install" state, delete the original "2.0" folder. When you run Audition 2.0 it will be re-created automatically in its default state. But doing so will erase your own preferences and workspaces, so do not do that unless you have a backup first - or even two.

In the future, if you've had a problem you may need selectively to restore (copy) the files or folders from "My last 2.0" into "2.0", as they contain important setups and customisations which you'll probably want to have back. Here's a list of some of them:-

DefaultWorkspaces [folder] - contains the "factory" workspaces. Audition expects to find the contents there under the original names, but if you want you can replace them with defaults of your own devising, using the same names - but under normal circumstances, leave them alone.

OriginalUserWorkspaces [folder] - these are in essence backups of the workspaces you have saved yourself. If (using the program's relevant option) you restore a workspace after having amended it, Audition will use the the version of the workspace in this folder.

UserWorkspaces [folder] - these are the current versions of workspaces you have created yourself. If you restore a workspace after having amended it, Audition will replace the amended workspace in this folder with the original one from the OriginalUserWorkspaces folder.

AudCust.ini
- Favourites definitions

AUDITION.INI
- Edit view mastering rack definitions
- "Extract from CD" definitions

AudMP3.ini
- Definitions of mp3 encoding settings

audition_settings.xml
- general settings and preferences - this contains a lot of handy stuff

effect_settings.xml
- effect settings

I must say that you are absolutely right MusicConductor! As a matter of fact, my presets are missing once again, just vanished!

Am I doing something wrong here, that's causing these constant deletions?

I've altered the thread title slightly, and made this sticky - it's come up a few times now, and yes, these XML files do seem to be remarkably fussy objects, one way or another. So, having the information available easily about what to save seems like a good idea.