So recently Unity has begun re-importing my assets almost every time I launch my project. This takes 20-25 minutes. It also appears to break one of them. Causing me to spend another 20-25 minutes fixing it.
I uninstalled Unity and reinstalled thinking this may help but it didn’t. I started a new project to see if somehow it was the project corrupted. I left it open for 3-4 hours and came back. sure enough all the assets were missing from the project panel. I went to the folder where the project was and opened the assets folder. Empty! I closed Unity and restarted the project and sure enough it had to re-import all the assets.
This just started within the last week… The only thing I can think of is Windows is trying to run update assistant (which I turned off now). Also I am working in offline mode.
The Unity version I am using is 2107.1.0f3. Again this just started in the last week.
It is reimporting they are on your system. Sounds like 1 of 2 things. User Account Control is being microsoft like, or that win10 bug that locks your crap down. Try restarting, which fixes the UAC issue if that is the one causing it, every time. Quick thing to try. Also try running Unity as administrator. I know these are dumb silly steps but you gotta turn it off and on again to advance in troubleshooting.
Important side note, your version number triggered a worry. IIRC and I am pretty sure I am on the money, 2017.1.0f3 was the version with the massive security vulnerability, so I would highly suggest picking ANY other version, closest to that one would be 2017.1.0p4 (the patch for that vulnerability)
Also you can work in offline mode all ya want, Unity is still gonna snoop on ya and get analytics, unless you have Pro and turn it off.