# All DevKinsta sites lost on PC restart
**URL:** https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913
**Category:** Application Support
**Created:** [September 21, 2026, 3:12am UTC](https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913 "2026-09-21T03:12:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@nicolepaton](https://community.kinsta.com/u/nicolepaton)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2026, 3:12am UTC](https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913/1 "2026-09-21T03:12:28Z")
Please help! I have lost all my DevKinsta sites after a routine windows restart for the second time in a week. The first time I thought it must have just been a glitch / corruption and I spent an entire day starting over.
Now it has happened for a second time in 5 days (on a different windows PC this time) and I simply don’t have time to do everything again.
When I opened DevKinsta after a routine windows restart there are just no sites shown in DevKinsta anymore. The containers are all still running in Docker.
I have checked the config.json file and there are no sites listed in there anymore.
“sites”: [],
My sites were running in WSL and the source files were stored in \\wsl.localhost\docker-desktop\mnt\docker-desktop-disk which is now totally empty after the restart.
This is a really concerning problem given it is happening repeatedly and frequently. I’m not the only one with this issue either as I found many other similar topics:
> [@PC Crashed and sites disappeared](https://community.kinsta.com/t/pc-crashed-and-sites-disappeared/6058):
>
> DevKinsta sites have disappeared on a PC crash and restart. DevKinsta wants me to reimport sites and starting as if a first time use. Closed and restated docker and DevKinsta a few times. Checked all C drive and no view of the sites that were on WSL folder structure. WSL links no longer active. Cannot access anything. No view of the site on the local drive. New Main.log and old dont seem to give any details for me. Appreciate any signpost to diagnose the issue.
> [@Updated DevKinsta, lost website](https://community.kinsta.com/t/updated-devkinsta-lost-website/3065):
>
> I had a website build with DevKinsta, and I wanted to start another one devkinsta said there was an update available. So I updated, only to find out that my other website is gone… Any idea on how to get that back? Or where it is gone? It’s a weeks work that is gone…
> [@Docker update has removed all DevKinsta sites](https://community.kinsta.com/t/docker-update-has-removed-all-devkinsta-sites/2414/6):
>
> Hi Mikey! DevKinsta doesn’t have any automatic backup tools that I know of, that would presently be the responsibility of an application on your computer to perform and restore the backups. That said, there are guides to potential solutions by others: The files you would need to back up with your existing computer backup solution, or integrate in the same way as the script mentioned above, and e.g. tar or zip up the contents of the docker containers externally with a script or cronjob, thou…
It is a massive process to start over as there are multiple sites and they are over 8GB each and once I set up the local versions in WSL via DevKinsta I have to install composer, node, tailwind etc. in there to run the builds plus Git to run the deploy process. So the whole thing cannot just be repeated easily at any time the sites feel like disappearing!
I believe the data still exists in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Docker\wsl\docker\_data (as this file is 25GB) however I don’t know how to make DevKinsta see the sites and use this data correctly again.
Can anyone help? How can I get the local sites back into DevKinsta and the files back into \\wsl.localhost\docker-desktop\mnt\docker-desktop-disk folder and how do I prevent this from ever happening again in the future?
Thanks very much,
Nicole
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### Author:  [@nicolepaton](https://community.kinsta.com/u/nicolepaton)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2026, 8:41am UTC](https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913/2 "2026-09-21T08:41:50Z")
Update: I started over. I had no choice. I spent over two hours trying to restore from the backup and wasn’t successful. So I uninstalled everything, deleted everything then reinstalled it all again and pulled down the large sites again.
So… how do I prevent this from ever happening again? Because I’m 100% certain that if I change nothing then nothing will change and exactly the same thing will happen again as it already happened twice. I already didn’t have time to redo everything again today and I certainly won’t again in the future.
Please let me know how I can ensure this never happens again.
Thanks,
Nicole
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### Author:  [@VladimirM](https://community.kinsta.com/u/VladimirM)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2026, 12:20pm UTC](https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913/3 "2026-09-21T12:20:31Z")
@nicolepaton I’m very sorry to hear about this issue.
Can you check if the main.log is still there before you uninstalled everything? In any case, please send the main.log file, so we can check.
Thank you
> **[Viewing the application log file - Troubleshooting - Error Codes - Kinsta® Docs](https://kinsta.com/docs/devkinsta/devkinsta-troubleshooting/error-codes/#viewing-the-application-log-file)**
>
> Below are errors with descriptions and solutions that you may see if an issue occurs in DevKinsta. Give the suggested solutions a try, and if the issue persists, report it to the DevKinsta Community Forum. | Find out what error codes may be returned...
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### Author:  [@nicolepaton](https://community.kinsta.com/u/nicolepaton)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2026, 11:19pm UTC](https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913/4 "2026-09-22T23:19:24Z")
Hi Vladimir,
Thanks for your help.
Sorry I no longer have the log from before the issue as I deleted everything and started fully fresh. However before I had to do that I spent a couple of hours trying to problem solve and I did review the logs as part of that process.
There was nothing of note in there at all. No errors. Nothing which showed what the problem was or the cause or that there even was a problem.
There were just normal log entries from when everything was working as expected before the restart then new log entries from DevKinsta starting up again fresh 7 minutes later with no sites. No errors on either side of the 7 minute gap in timestamps.
Had there been something relevant in the logs I would definitely have come back to this thread and posted it here then.
I’m sure this will no doubt happen again as it has already happened twice and I haven’t change anything. So when it does I will be sure to post the logs immediately.
Thanks,
Nicole
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### Author:  [@VladimirM](https://community.kinsta.com/u/VladimirM)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2026, 1:59pm UTC](https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913/5 "2026-09-23T13:59:29Z")
Hello Nicole 👋
I’m sorry to hear that. Also, if it happens again, please don’t uninstall or delete DevKinsta while we troubleshoot. It is a strange issue, I also have a Windows machine and DevKinsta installed there for years, and while updates were known to sometimes cause issues, sites have never disappeared so it might be specific to some aspect of the machine, operating system, Docker, WSL and how it interacts with DevKinsta, but we’ll need it in broken state and logs to check.
We’ll be here 👍
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### Author:  [@nicolepaton](https://community.kinsta.com/u/nicolepaton)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2026, 1:06am UTC](https://community.kinsta.com/t/all-devkinsta-sites-lost-on-pc-restart/7913/6 "2026-09-24T01:06:56Z")
Thanks. It has happened on two completely different Windows PC’s for me in the last week… so it is certainly not related to just one system or machine.
I’m actually too scared to shutdown or restart windows now in case it happens again, however inevitably I will have to do that sooner or later so I will report back if/when it happens again.
Thanks,
Nicole