Migrate from Cue to ICUE questions

"If you are using CUE, installing iCUE will automatically replace your CUE software and migrate settings." - Quoted from sticky thread "Before installing ICUE"

• What does "migrate" and/or "replace" mean please? Are all the old profiles of Cue 2 safely transported to iCUE? Are all the Actions and timers lighting of CUE 2 secure?
   
  
• How do you safely backup your profiles and actions of CUE 2 before installing or migrating to iCUE? Is this recommended?
  
• Is CUE 2 going to be updated/patched on a go-forward basis or is it obsolete?
  

Thanks for your help.

I have a Scimitar mouse running on CUE 2 (and a K95 RGB keyboard running on the far superior CUE 1, which I now know can't be migrated (2 separate computers)).

The things I had migrated fine to iCue. I would suggest you back up things if you upgrade, I think someone else can pipe in on the locations of where all the profiles are saved, as I am at work right now and can't look. Whether or not CUE2 is going to be updated, I don't think it will, though someone official from Corsair would have to pipe in.

Lastly, if you only have the mouse and keyboard and everything is fine, maybe you should take a look at the features and see if there is any need to upgrade. i.e. FarCry5 support, RGB RAM, or any items brought over from Link. I love iCUE and have devices that are not supported in CUE and fully recommend people in my situation to use iCUE. Though if you are fine, maybe give it a little more time to work out some small kinks. That being said I wouldn't hesitate to tell someone to upgrade if they want to get some LL-120 fans or a Lighting Node Pro w/ some strips.

Thanks!

My opinion of CUE 2 and of Corsair for putting me through CUE 2 is documented elsewhere in this forum. I cannot believe how terrible it is for editing actions. After hundreds of hours of trying to recreate profiles of actions that were lost in the "migration" from CUE 1 to CUE 2, I had to give up, and now run both programs. CUE 2 is on my secondary gaming computer. I don't understand: I guess people that like the new CUE are downloading lighting profiles from others, and not building complicated actions? I don't know.

Everything is NOT fine. Running both programs, I build the actions on CUE 1, and test them, than write them down and build them on CUE 2. Beyond ridiculous. I could go on and on...

I want to be able to check back here and see if they've made any updates such that I can start to buy Corsair again, but I have to blast through forum post after forum post, and I don't know how to do it easily or where to look.

If I download ICUE, and all my actions get thrown out again, I will go crazy. CUE 2 is terrible for me, but I'm using it, until the mouse dies I guess. Some of the actions I have can't be transferred to competitors, and I do not want to enter them again, for goodness sake.

So bottom line, I want to check for updates/improvements, and I want to safely update my existing profiles.

Both CUE 2.xx and iCUE 3.xx use the local folder C:Users/(name)/App Data (hidden)/Roaming/Corsair/CUE to store profiles, icon links, program links, etc. When you install iCUE 3, it will automatically remove the CUE 2 program, then import some of those settings into iCUE. For the most part, this is helpful, although it is very common for an extra "spiral rainbow" to find its way into many of your lighting effects. It's not too difficult to delete the next time you use the profile.

The key bit of information is this conversion is a one way process. You cannot turn those iCUE profiles back into working CUE 2 profiles and even going back from to earlier iCUE 3.xx versions may not be possible. Therefore, what you probably should be doing each and every time is to copy the contents of the App Data.../CUE folder into a separate location and label it by version number. This is even more true if you have a lot of profiles. You can also export/import these things one at a time, but since the iCUE profiles may be version specific, you must again keep separate storage for each version of the application. Also, linked images, icons, programs, etc. do not travel with an export. Copying the CUE folder will preserve all of those Links.

There has been no official word on the future of CUE 2.xx. However, barring unforeseen circumstances or a critical hardware update situation, I suspect 2.24.50 was the last. As far as peripherals go, iCUE is not substantially different than CUE 2. Most of the changes focus on bringing the internal case devices into the fold. This should be an easier transition. I balked at the move from CUE 1 to 2 several times before finally digging in and figuring it out. This is a much easier move. That said, if you are looking to do the least amount of work possible, just stay on CUE 2.24.50.

**Right on cue... now we do know. Corsair is ending support for CUE 2 and will even shutter that part of the forum in a month.

Both CUE 2.xx and iCUE 3.xx use the local folder C:Users/(name)/App Data (hidden)/Roaming/Corsair/CUE to store profiles, icon links, program links, etc. When you install iCUE 3, it will automatically remove the CUE 2 program, then import some of those settings into iCUE. For the most part, this is helpful, although it is very common for an extra "spiral rainbow" to find its way into many of your lighting effects. It's not too difficult to delete the next time you use the profile.

 

The key bit of information is this conversion is a one way process. You cannot turn those iCUE profiles back into working CUE 2 profiles and even going back from to earlier iCUE 3.xx versions may not be possible. Therefore, what you probably should be doing each and every time is to copy the contents of the App Data.../CUE folder into a separate location and label it by version number. This is even more true if you have a lot of profiles. You can also export/import these things one at a time, but since the iCUE profiles may be version specific, you must again keep separate storage for each version of the application. Also, linked images, icons, programs, etc. do not travel with an export. Copying the CUE folder will preserve all of those Links.

Thanks for this above. Before migrating to ICUE, I copied my CUE program file and this APP data to a network drive (June 27). I migrated after that (July 7ish - waiting to see on this forum if people were experiencing problems with the migration.) The migration went ok, with ICUE seeming a little crisper/improved to CUE 2 on some editing looks, and profiles and actions seeming to be imported. On July 23, however, when I opened ICUE, all my profiles and actions created between July 7 and July 23 were missing on ICUE.

The backup App Data file of Cue profiles I created before the migration, has 53 items in it, while the App Data file on my local drive has 66 items, but the look and feel of my ICUE seems to have reverted to the look of it on July 7.

Maybe the profiles haven't been deleted? Is there a way to reload the profiles?

The copy of the app data folder is just that... a copy from the moment in time it was made. Re-inserting the 6.27 folder likely prompted iCUE to convert them all again and brought you back to Day 1, with some spiral rainbows added in. Unfortunately everything you did since that moment is lost.

I would suggest making a regular copy of the App data folder for back up purposes. That can be once a week or whatever, but the only time you really need to do it is after major Profile alterations or before updating to a new iCUE version. I tweaked 10 or so this morning and that was the last thing I did before leaving. I would also suggest saving these app data folders in version specific folders (iCUE 3.5, iCUE 3.4, etc.). Profile saves may not be compatible with all versions and we have seen this already moving from 3.2 to 3.3.

As mentioned above, you can also individually export profiles. It takes more time, does not save associated links, and you still need to be wary of the iCUE version. However, nothing says you can’t do both and I usually export important profiles or ones I really labored on.

So, don’t delete the 6.27 file. Save it permanently in case you need to go back to cue 2. Once you get things back the way you want in iCUE, make a new copy of the app data folder and stuff it into a new net drive folder named iCUE 3.5. You can overwrite that with additional 3.5 copies, until we get to 3.6. Then make a final copy before upgrading and start a new 3.6 folder.

Thanks again for your quick reply! This is me crazy (in reference to above, where all my profiles are deleted again! omg. why is this only happening to me?).

Reading your post you have misinterpreted I think: I haven't re-inserted my 6.27 folder: it is safely tucked away on my network drive (I hope). My ICUE has lost all my profiles created from 7.07 to 7.23, and I was looking back to my back-up folder to view the differences, but haven't done anything with it yet.

My ICUE is not displaying actions or profiles created since 7.07. but my appdata file on my local computer has more profile files in it then the back-up. I just wonder if there's something in the local profile data files that ICUE is not picking up.

I describe the possible things that I've done since 7.07 in another post, that may have caused this:

• I migrated from CUE2 to ICUE relatively recently, (might have been 180709). The migration seemed to have no problems as far as importing actions and profiles. Is ICUE possibly looking in the wrong place for new actions or profiles?
  
  
• Often I put my computer to sleep or let it self log off, but I shut it down last night. Last hard shut down may have been 180709. The actions and profiles save though don't they? - or do I have to do something else to hard save them?
  
  
• I also have problems with ICUE not recognizing my installed peripherals quite often. It will suddenly say, "no device connected" when no changes have been made. I can normally correct this by unplugging and re-plugging in the peripheral (mouse). Last night when I was making a backup to my profile, so copying the profile and re-dating it, ICUE was showing a blue box, instead of a visual representation of the scimitar pro mouse it usually does. The mouse and actions were working, but ICUE seemed like it was bugging out a bit, before I shut down the computer.
  
  

One more possible cause, that I'm investigating is that because I copy previous profiles, using the old as a backup and re-dating it, all my profiles are linked to StarCraft 2. I haven't noticed problems with this before I think, because all the profiles are linked to this, the top profile will load even though StarCraft isn't loaded.

To clarify my question: My ICUE has reverted to the look of 7.07 which was likely close to 6.27. I made a lot of changes between 7.07 and 7.23 using ICUE, and there seem to be about 13 more profile data files on my local drive, but ICUE isn't picking them up. Any hypotheses on whether they can be recovered?

I am afraid I don't know how to recover the data. You can go to the "profiles" folder within App Data/Corsair/CUE and look, but it is going to be alpha-numeric gibberish mixed with any profile images and links you saved. I think it would be more work to sort and compare these to the prior saved version than it would be to recreate, and even then I don't know what you could do about it.

It is interesting it has reverted to essentially the Day 1 state, keeping the old profiles while vanishing the new ones created under its own interface. Perhaps it retains some copy of the original files that were converted? I am afraid either way you are now past my expertise level. It is curious and perhaps that will suggest where things are going wrong to someone who works on the program .

The only thing I can suggest is to make a quick copy of your current app data folder and drop it on the desktop. Uninstall iCUE and "delete saved settings" to eliminate the installed App Data folder. Reinstall iCUE. Before launching, drop the just copied and current App Data folder back in. If the profiles are still there, perhaps it will "read them". I suppose the thing to do first is go into that Profile folder in App Data, then sort by file type with CUERPROFILEDATA on top. Count the number of entries. That is the existing number of profiles. Same number as the June 23 folder? Probably gone. Lots more? Then maybe they can be recovered/re-recognized through re-installation.

The only thing I can suggest is to make a quick copy of your current app data folder and drop it on the desktop. Uninstall iCUE and "delete saved settings" to eliminate the installed App Data folder. Reinstall iCUE. Before launching, drop the just copied and current App Data folder back in. If the profiles are still there, perhaps it will "read them". I suppose the thing to do first is go into that Profile folder in App Data, then sort by file type with CUERPROFILEDATA on top. Count the number of entries. That is the existing number of profiles. Same number as the June 23 folder? Probably gone. Lots more? Then maybe they can be recovered/re-recognized through re-installation.

Thanks for this suggestion. With some thought and effort to my specific circumstances this may work. I may ask for further advice before I step into it. I guess the problem with "re-creating" lost actions and profiles, is that I use the mouse movement actions that Corsair has available to compensate for decreased hand mobility. My actions don't tend to work when I first create them, having to insert movements, actions, and delays after the fact. I was creating backups upon backups of actions and profiles. It literally takes me 3 seconds to change between my 180709 profile and my 180626 profile. I think your advice, and it's good advice, is that I have to take this hidden appdata file and copy it to hide it from the Corsair Utility Engine periodically after a small amount of changes to back it up. Although I backed up my data before I migrated from CUE2 to ICUE, I haven't ever successfully reloaded the Utility Engine from a back-up.

My ICUE folder has 13 more profile data files then my CUE2 backup folder, which is probably close to the number of backup profiles I created between 07.09 and 07.23, but it doesn't read them all of a sudden.

If iCUE isnt able to pick up a profile in the %appdata folder it would be kinda difficult to manually recover them.

Well... sh-t. :brick:

When I first migrated from CUE1 to CUE2, it deleted all my profiles. I loved CUE1. It had a nice manual. I didn't want something different, I just bought their mouse, and thought it would work out of the package. I contacted Corsair Support, and they told me that I would have to recreate my profiles. Then they sent me a survey asking how their support was, and I was like "Well... 0 out of 10. You didn't help me solve my problem at all." Except I was mad, and not polite about it.

I posted to your sticky thread of an instruction manual, asking how to migrate back to CUE1, of which my post was shut down and removed. Hopefully it wasn't rude as it wasn't intended to be, and was shut down because maybe it didn't belong in the sticky thread, or because I was critical of Corsair not having an instruction manual for their product, which I had accidentally bought.

I quoted my post and contacted Corsair support, to ask them how to migrate back to CUE1, and they've never replied to me. (I still think Corsair is being irresponsible: in the sticky posts to ICUE migration, they don't mention at all that CUE1 is completely incompatible with ICUE. I bought my keyboard late last year, and CUE1 was the recommended download. It can't be a stretch to think that there is more CUE1 out there.) I came back after a few months, attempting to give it another try, religiously backing up my profiles and my actions, and they're gone again.

Besides bad karma for cussing out Corsair, what caused this? What can I do?

My name is Earl. I hereby wholly retract all previous negative remarks made about Corsair within this forum and within this post. Their products have never failed me physically, and have a look and feel of high quality. I apologize to Corsair support for the negative survey response, which of course was in no way intended to insult the individual respondent who did a fine job of responding promptly. No, I still can't bring myself to recommend ICUE if an alternative meets your needs, but I truly believe that the individuals comprising Corsair are fine people, and Corsair wants to improve it's products through innovation and integrity.

Maybe that will work? I'll see you again in 3 months.

I am going to assume reinstalling iCUE (CUE 3) and dropping your current App Data folder back in did not restore the profiles? :(:

I am afraid any migration up a CUE level (1-->2, 2-->3) is going to be irreversible as far as profiles go. You have to be somewhat careful within CUE versions as well. Quite a few of us were caught off guard on the switch from 3.2 to 3.3. 3.3 had some pretty big issues and those who casually updated through the app could not go back without starting over or using older saved profiles.

Well... sh-t. :brick:

 

When I first migrated from CUE1 to CUE2, it deleted all my profiles. I loved CUE1. It had a nice manual. I didn't want something different, I just bought their mouse, and thought it would work out of the package. I contacted Corsair Support, and they told me that I would have to recreate my profiles. Then they sent me a survey asking how their support was, and I was like "Well... 0 out of 10. You didn't help me solve my problem at all." Except I was mad, and not polite about it.

 

I posted to your sticky thread of an instruction manual, asking how to migrate back to CUE1, of which my post was shut down and removed. Hopefully it wasn't rude as it wasn't intended to be, and was shut down because maybe it didn't belong in the sticky thread, or because I was critical of Corsair not having an instruction manual for their product, which I had accidentally bought.

 

I quoted my post and contacted Corsair support, to ask them how to migrate back to CUE1, and they've never replied to me. (I still think Corsair is being irresponsible: in the sticky posts to ICUE migration, they don't mention at all that CUE1 is completely incompatible with ICUE. I bought my keyboard late last year, and CUE1 was the recommended download. It can't be a stretch to think that there is more CUE1 out there.) I came back after a few months, attempting to give it another try, religiously backing up my profiles and my actions, and they're gone again.

 

Besides bad karma for cussing out Corsair, what caused this? What can I do?

 

My name is Earl. I hereby wholly retract all previous negative remarks made about Corsair within this forum and within this post. Their products have never failed me physically, and have a look and feel of high quality. I apologize to Corsair support for the negative survey response, which of course was in no way intended to insult the individual respondent who did a fine job of responding promptly. No, I still can't bring myself to recommend ICUE if an alternative meets your needs, but I truly believe that the individuals comprising Corsair are fine people, and Corsair wants to improve it's products through innovation and integrity.

 

Maybe that will work? I'll see you again in 3 months.

CUE 1 was not designed to be updated to CUE 2. Especially not the later versions. If the profile were made in a later build of CUE 2 it should update fairly easily to iCUE. CUE 1 is nearing 5 years old now so support for its profiles have long been dropped. Unless you backed up your profiles theres nothing support can do to get your profiles back. If CUE 1 had everything you needed, it won't hurt to stay on CUE 1.

CUE 1 support was also ended a few years ago and its not something they would think about. Im not sure why the DL page would have recommended CUE 1 a year ago. The only links that I could find are on my FAQ page.

CUE 1 was not designed to be updated to CUE 2. Especially not the later versions. If the profile were made in a later build of CUE 2 it should update fairly easily to iCUE. CUE 1 is nearing 5 years old now so support for its profiles have long been dropped. Unless you backed up your profiles theres nothing support can do to get your profiles back. If CUE 1 had everything you needed, it won't hurt to stay on CUE 1.

 

CUE 1 support was also ended a few years ago and its not something they would think about. Im not sure why the DL page would have recommended CUE 1 a year ago. The only links that I could find are on my FAQ page.

I do know all this now of course. The facts are that I bought my keyboard at about this time last year, and I had occasion to figure out CUE in November 2017 because of decreased hand mobility. Had no reason to choose CUE 1 over CUE 2. Chose what the site recommended. Loved it. Bought a mouse in February. Plugged it in. Didn't work. Went to Corsair site. Clicked Download beside the mouse. Erased everything. Corsair's response is similar to yours "Unless you backed it up..." Believe me, I looked frantically through the instruction manual for how I was supposed to back it up, and if there was some sort of auto-backup. "You will have to recreate your profiles". Ok. Thought bubble: "It took me a couple weeks to figure out CUE 1, I'll figure out CUE 2 and recreate the profiles. Wow, this new technology is much harder than the 5 year old technology. Where's the instruction manual? For whatever reason, my Actions created in CUE 1 would queue and execute after the first action was completed. You CANNOT do this in CUE 2 or later. The bottom line is it is likely that there are some profiles created in CUE1 that CANNOT be recreated in CUE2. I am running both Cue 1 and ICUE (now). There are actions I have on CUE1, that I know cannot be recreated on CUE2. (Actually, this seems like a bug in CUE 2 or later, and is maybe not intentional? I haven't tried since, but as of June 2018 you could not safely execute 2 Actions sequentially in CUE 2 or beyond.)

"It won't hurt to stay on CUE 1" -

Staying on CUE 1 is not an option for me now right? Because it was erased in February. I have largely "recreated" my CUE 1 profiles on my work computer, so yeah I'm staying on CUE 1 on that computer. It may hurt a bit because, it won't update, Corsair no longer supports it, and any bugs are permanent, so that's great.

That was the original point of this thread's question about safe migration. I hijacked this thread, with my questions to fix profiles lost...again, because C-attack was helping me out on this thread.

I do not have a public presence, and this forum is the first I've posted to. My posts when I read them after are long winded, and sometimes more evil then I intend. So once again, I appreciate your help. I am talking to you on an equal level and trying to be respectful:

On the sticky post "Before installing ICUE", Corsair CJ should say that,

CUE 1 is not compatible with ICUE and cannot be migrated. If you are currently using CUE 1, all profiles, actions, and lighting will have to be recreated using the ICUE interface. Corsair no longer supports CUE 1 however, and it will not be updated. ICUE (and CUE 2) are not updates to CUE 1: They are different programs relying on different programming structures. Because of this, it is possible that some profiles and actions will not be able to be recreated if you migrate to ICUE. Further, the program files for CUE 1 and ICUE will occupy the same space, and necessary components of CUE 1 will be deleted by installing ICUE. CUE 1 and ICUE cannot run concurrently on the same computer or operating system.

I respectfully disagree with you and other super users referring to CUE 1 as 5 year old technology, because the way we're wired, makes this a strong subjective argument to migrate to ICUE. The number seems small, but I have seen a few others in this forum who thought they were "updating" CUE 1, and were surprised that everything was deleted. For the purposes of running a K95 RGB keyboard, the CUE1 5 year old technology, was vastly superior. ICUE may be better for integrating everything, I don't know. I do know that I have been religiously backing up my profiles and actions for the last 2 weeks with ICUE, and they're gone again with this new technology.

I am going to assume reinstalling iCUE (CUE 3) and dropping your current App Data folder back in did not restore the profiles? :(:

No, it did not restore the profiles, though I did this today and it does appear to be a complete reload of where I was before I uninstalled and reinstalled it, so for example my 180709 profile is back.

It is "interesting" to me too as you say as to why it reverted back to this particular day:

06.26 would have probably been the last profile modified using CUE2

07.09 is probably the first copy of the profile made in ICUE copied from 06.26

I scanned through my profiles in the roaming file with the Notes text editor for names of profiles after 07.09 which would have been copies of the 07.09 profile and couldn't find any. There is one in there which had the name 07.21 from 06.26 though, which is interesting because it would be a copy of 06.26, though it doesn't appear in my profiles list.

There are a bunch of older profiles in the Appdata which don't appear in the CUE too I realize now. Looking at the "Date Modified" in Windows, there are a bunch that are 07/23, where all the ones that appear in CUE say 07/24. If I copy 07.09, it appears instantly in the Appdata modified on 07/26.

My method of backing up my Profiles and Actions in CUE was clearly the wrong way to do it, because a) it didn't protect me, with all backups being deleted. and b) it looks like it loads down the program with all profiles and actions being modified frequently with each use of the program.

Thanks for your help with this. I've learned a bit.