NopCommerce trying to reinstall

I've been working with a copy of NopCommerce on a local server and everything has been working fine, and last night it was definitely working, but this morning when I came in and tried to pull the site up I can only get to the nopcommerce installation screen. I can still see the database, and I've tried republishing my project several times but only the installation screen shows up, anyone seen this before or have an idea of how to fix it? Thanks!

Check to make sure you have in your App_Data folder the Settings.txt file and the proper database connection string is there.  That file is updated during installation.  It might be when you published the project, you wiped out that folder/file by mistake.

Ah it seems that file got deleted when I published last, how do I get it back? Or is there a sample one I can use to recreate it? Thanks!

lordjaynoAK wrote:

When you go to publish, check your settings for the "Exclude App_Data" option.  Or, once you install it the first time, copy that file to your solution and publish that.

where can i find "Settings.txt" in nopcommerce 3.50?

kalpeshbhadra wrote:
\App_Data\Settings.txt

Where can I find the Settings.txt in 4.1?

Starting 4.00 it was moved to \App_Data\dataSettings.json