Issue with editing files and the UAC (Vista)

[Mercarian]

Hello everyone, semi-new here although I've looked up issues on the forums before. This is one that I've searched for (both here and on Google) with no luck thus far. I recently got a new PC with Vista installed, to replace my old PC that had XP. I'm not (entirely) new to base-modding, and had installed, updated, and unpacked (and edited) the Medieval II files before with them working properly on my old PC. So, on my new one (after turning off the UAC to actually be able to edit said files) I modified what I wanted to, namely buildings and tested it with the UAC still off; and it worked with all of the modifications. (Using the file_true = true method)

Afterward I turned back on the UAC for safety reasons and proceeded to play the game once more, with all of the modifications still in place, only to find that they weren't in place once in-game. I fiddled with files and permissions for a few hours before swapping back to the UAC-off state and... finding that the game worked with all of the edits and changes in-game once more. However, turning it back on once more made them vanish. And... I have no idea of how to keep them while this safety feature is checked. Any ideas?

[Azim]

Welcome to TWC! I was also a lurker for a long time before I finally registered.

First of all, IMO, you should never turn off UAC, even temporarily. To me, it seems like putting the only good feature of Vista to waste. That aside, you won't know how the mod behaves with UAC if you mod with UAC off. (As you have already found.) Here are some things to try:
1. Do a recursive permissions change to give yourself full permissions over the M2TW folder. (You may not have these permissions even if you are an administrator if you installed into the Program Files folder.)
2. Make sure the files you edited are not marked read only.
3. Make sure you set io = file_first in your preferences.cfg file.
4. Make sure you deleted any timestamped files and map.rwm if you edited any map files.
5. Try running the game as an administrator if you did not already.

[Mercarian]

Thanks for the reply, Azim. I continued to fiddle with it all while waiting for a reply yesterday and, sadly, am forced to unpack with the UAC turned off (it simply won't allow me to do it with it on, even if I run as admin - the files just don't appear). That aside, I ran into a strange glitch that installing and uninstalling, five times to be exact, didn't fix - that being a crash whenever I went into a battle. But, as you said, running it as the administrator fixed that issue which... well, seems odd, but whatever! I'm going to try re-modifying the files now and see if running it as administrator, after unpacking it and such, will allow it to work as I intended... If so (or if not), I'll edit this with an update!

Only sad thing is is that it won't run with Steam, if such, but that is more of an issue with Steam and Vista than Medieval 2 itself.

Edit: Not entirely sure, but I (may) have figured it out! Darn you Vista and hiding files. Again, thank you for the help Azim.

[Gigantus]

Battle Crash: those are the geography files in the data folder that cause it. Check the readme in the unpacker directory for more details.

[Mercarian]

I knew that. The thing I didn't know was that Vista made a hidden folder in my User folder that it read, instead of the modifications that I actually made. So while I did delete those files, it was reading it under said user-file, rather than the modified admin file; which was why Run as Administrator worked and running it regularly didn't... the trials and tribulations of Vista, I guess. Still, thank you for the help and it is fixed after much browsing and hair-pulling frustrations.

[Gigantus]

I usually circumvent that mess by NOT installing into the default directory. If it ain't in "Program files" then it won't be in "Virtual Store" either.

[SigniferOne]

Ok so what are the lessons to be learned for those of us trying to distribute mods under Vista? We can't tell the user where to install his Med2 installation...

My usual problem is that so far I've been distributing my beta through a .zip file. This created inordinate and incredible problems for vista. Would just having a regular .exe installer make things work (so that e.g. vista would place a copy of my mod in the virtual store thingy, or whatever else it would need to do)?

[Gigantus]

The problem does not lie with the installation. Installers can be made to read registry entries so that they install automatically into the right places (provided the initial setup is correct). Simply provide a cfg with the following entry and it will work properly in Vista:
[game]
allusers = 1

The problem here is with Vista users that want to do their own modding.

And I will continue my crusade by telling them to install somewhere other then the program files directory.