Preferences File: Is this a Windows 7 Problem?

**Oldgamer** · October 02, 2010, 06:08 PM

I cannot find my preferences file, in spite of the fact that I've been modding RTW & RTR for many years, now. I also can't find my saved games, though that they are loading is beyond doubt.

I want to get into preferences so I can do away with the green arrows and the bouncing banners. This is the kind of stuff I've been doing since RTW 1.0 was released. I've found four preferences files, and changed them all, but I still have the things that reduce the realism, for me.

Have you used a script to control these things, does the installer place the file in a place I wouldn't expect, or is this a Windows 7 problem? By the way, the game performs flawlessly on the Windows 7 Premium Home Edition.

Very curious.

**pannonian** · October 02, 2010, 08:58 PM

Search? That's what I normally do when I don't know where my files have been shifted.

**Oldgamer** · October 03, 2010, 07:59 PM

Originally Posted by pannonian

Search? That's what I normally do when I don't know where my files have been shifted.

I forgot to thank you for this simple idea. This is how I located the hidden files, something like c:username/users/appdata/et cetera. It was a very long file location.

**Quinn Inuit** · October 02, 2010, 10:07 PM

That's strange. It's still in the same directory as the .exe on my computer. My guess is that this is Windows 7 thing. Do you have all of your hidden files viewable? It's not hidden on mine, but one never knows.

You might also be able to change that from the in-game options somewhere, probably in the battles.

btw, thanks for the info about the game running well on Windows 7 Home Premium. My machine is from 2006, so it'll need to be upgraded eventually, and it's nice to know that the game will still work well.

**Oldgamer** · October 02, 2010, 10:19 PM

Originally Posted by Quinn Inuit

That's strange. It's still in the same directory as the .exe on my computer. My guess is that this is Windows 7 thing. Do you have all of your hidden files viewable? It's not hidden on mine, but one never knows.

Aha! I never dreamed that when I loaded a game into the Activision folder, some of the files were hidden. I found it, and got rid of the annoying green arrows. Thanks.

btw, thanks for the info about the game running well on Windows 7 Home Premium. My machine is from 2006, so it'll need to be upgraded eventually, and it's nice to know that the game will still work well.

Last night, I tried running it in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3, and it ran beautifully. Unfortunately, all of my Windows 7 savegames were not available, so I switched back to the new OS.

**Quinn Inuit** · October 03, 2010, 05:25 PM

Oh, good, I'm glad you got it working.

**Seleukos Nikator** · October 05, 2010, 06:14 AM

yep, it is a windows 7 thing.
as i installed rome in c:\program files\... windows 7 uses to store the save games, reference files etc. in the c:/username/users/appdata/et-cetera-directory.
bad thing is, in case you use the culture shock mod for ExRM, the restart_campaign.bat (not sure about the exact name) won't have any effect. i recognized it, as i wanted to start a new campaign with the greek city states after i messed up an iberian campaign: Every loaded game with the greeks all cities became barbarian culture. even applying files as non-hidden and performing compatibility modes doesn't work out. so i reinstalled ExRM to C:\Users\myusername\Saved Games\rome\ and everything worked fine now in my pontic campaign.

**Oldgamer** · October 05, 2010, 08:19 PM

Originally Posted by Seleukos Nikator

yep, it is a windows 7 thing.
as i installed rome in c:\program files\... windows 7 uses to store the save games, reference files etc. in the c:/username/users/appdata/et-cetera-directory.
bad thing is, in case you use the culture shock mod for ExRM, the restart_campaign.bat (not sure about the exact name) won't have any effect. i recognized it, as i wanted to start a new campaign with the greek city states after i messed up an iberian campaign: Every loaded game with the greeks all cities became barbarian culture. even applying files as non-hidden and performing compatibility modes doesn't work out. so i reinstalled ExRM to C:\Users\myusername\Saved Games\rome\ and everything worked fine now in my pontic campaign.

Thanks for the information. I'm still playing my first campaign, as of yet. I really like Windows 7 ... and the 5 gigs of RAM that came with my new computer! But like every OS Windows has released, there are frustrating compatability problems.

Like when I found out that Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri couldn't be made to work on XP ...

**Mogan** · October 06, 2010, 12:16 AM

Huh? I remember playing Alpha Centauri on XP. Could it be because I had Alien Crossfire as well?

**Caesar Augustus** · October 06, 2010, 01:08 AM

I never had an issue playing Alpha Centauri on XP either. The only time I ran into problems was when I tried using the compatability patch that came on the disk

That said, I didn't run into any issues getting RTW and ExRM to work on Windows 7 either. Apart from not being able to see some files and having to run Notepad in Admin mode if I wanted to be able to mod the game.

**Quinn Inuit** · October 06, 2010, 09:23 PM

I can even get Master of Orion 1&2 to play on XP. Not always, though. 3 works, too, if you mod the crap out of it.

And I recommend Notepad++ for all of your text editing needs. It's massively better than Notepad. Although I prefer v3.5 to the newer versions because it allows you to put the Find Next command into a macro. That, by itself, is more useful than every single upgrade in the newer versions, at least to me.

**Mogan** · October 07, 2010, 02:48 AM

Oh. MOO2 was so great! Funny part is that it also runs smoothly on the Orion2.exe, but not with the Orion95.exe.

**Irenaeus** · October 07, 2010, 05:08 AM

Aaah, Master of Orion! I recently got it from Good Old Games and it runs great via DosBox. Considering it just has about 6 screens, it's highly addictive!

Any games you intend to mod shouldn't be placed in Program Files, since Windows 7 does some protection & virtualisation stuff in there, making the games sometimes unable to pick up the mod. Personally I place all my games in C:\Games, this solves all the problems

**Seleukos Nikator** · October 08, 2010, 05:47 AM

Originally Posted by Irenaeus

Any games you intend to mod shouldn't be placed in Program Files, since Windows 7 does some protection & virtualisation stuff in there, making the games sometimes unable to pick up the mod.

aye, that's right.

Originally Posted by Irenaeus

Personally I place all my games in C:\Games, this solves all the problems

personally i place all my games in D:\ in case i have to reinstall my windows. though lacking registry entries most old games (diablo, starcraft, rome) will still perform after a new OS install.
but in the case of rome i wanted to have it on my C:\ drive which is a solid state disk (SSD), while my D:\ drive is a conventional HDD. (result: loading times have enormously shortened, but i have not known of the issue you described above at the time i installed ExRM + CS mod the first time, so i had to reinstall it to a different path after i stumbled over the mentioned problems.)