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My PC died :conf:

I bought a new one (with Vista) and installed TOAW III and the latest patch without any problems.
I recovered all my save files from the old drive and copied them into the default TOAW Saves folder on the new machine.

I had a couple of games where I was part-way through a turn. The saves loaded fine, things were steaming along with my new quad-core, 4GB system. I finished the turns for a couple games, saving the PBL files in the default location.

It was just too easy and too good to be true:

I went to email the finished turns to my opponents and they had vanished! I rifled through folders, used the seach function on the whole drive. All i could find were "shortcuts" in the folder C:\Users\David\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent. These shortcuts pointed to files the default saves folder, but if it tried to " open target", windows said it couldn't find them.

If I use load a saved game, or load a PBEM in TOAW, it sees the files, and loads them, but as far as windows, my email client, or any other App is conscerned, they don't exist.

(note, windows can see all the files I transferred, but nothing saved when playing on the new machine. TOAW can see both)

Can anyone help?

Further news.

In the folder view of my saves folder , there is a button on the toolbar called "Compatibility Files". If i click this, everyting else dissapears and my missing files turn up. However, I can't find them when using the add attachment dialogue in my mail client. (PS I use firefox and webmail)

David

I think I've worked this out. (no thanks to windows help, which was useless.)

In vista, most folders appear to be read only by default. (you can copy/write to them in vista with a pop-up adminstrator nag.)

TOAW must run in XP compatibility mode and when it tries to save to C:\Program Files\Matrix Games\Saves (which is not write protected by defaut in XP), Vista just fools it into thinking its saving to its chosen folder, when really it saves them to C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Matrix Games\Saves\FitE. I can only presume they were worried about the Vista nag interrupt screwing legacy applications.

However, AppData is a hidden folder, so you have to turn hidden folders off in order to navigate to your files in vista or any other app. (This is most probably why the stupid search function didn't pick them up either)

ah, the laws of unitended consequences.

From now on, ensure saves are stored in a Vista "user space", especially with legacy apps.

Or like me - use XP !

Thanks Pegasus for that great rundown on Vista....that'll save us a lot of hours if we have to switch over.

And you must switch over if you buy a new computer. There doesn't seem to be any alternative. J

I just switched to Vista this past weekend, and was pleasantly surprised not to experience any of the problems reported by Pegasus. I'm not sure why. There are lots of different file viewing options, but I'm able to copy moves in & out of the game "save" directory, whether using "classic", or not. There's a huge amount of mystery and confusion getting used to Vista, so just call me lucky! Like Pegasus, I am running the game in "XP" mode.

Ed

After a while I noticed that if I was using an administrator profile, the game would save in the Saves folder in the default location on the C drive, and I could copy and write to and from it directly. With a normal user account files were saved in the location as stated in previous messages. (the game application still thinks it is saving in the Saves folder on the C drive, etc etc.)

A friend had a different experience, normal user accounts put save files in the default location on the C drive, and he could access and copy them. The only difference we could see was that Vista was preinstalled on my machine when purchased, whereas he installed his own copy from scratch. When setting up Vista, the vendor of my machine has set the C drive as write protected as the default for normal user accounts, whereas his self instal gave normal users full access to the C drive folders by default.


David

Not wanting to confuse the issue even further, but microsoft applications are also fooled as to where the files actually are. For example, Windows Mail thinks the game saves are in the default location in the C drive, when they are acutally physically in C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Matrix Games\Saves\, however, if you are using Firefox to access web mail and point to the default location to attach a file, it won't find them.


David

Thanks again, and maybe it's starting to make sense; my Vista was preinstalled at the factory, but apparently they didn't write-protect C; just did the typical hiding of system files, etc. Also, I have been running as the administrator. So far, so good!