Game ignores changes?

[edcope]

So for about two weeks I've been happily making modifications to both RTW and BI. Today, however, every change I make seems to cause the program to crash to the campaign selection screen. Not being able to find the problem, I deleted and reinstalled RTW and BI, and then patched it to 1.6. Now, even the most basic, easiest changes other than border changes in the map_regions.tga file go completely ignored by the program. For example, I cannot get the Goths to be able to build stone walls or health buildings, I cannot add a province, or change ancillaries. I've made these changes before, and wrote down the directions step by step. They used to work, now they don't. Has anyone encountered this Twilight Zone-esque scenario before? What might have caused this?

[Dr Fox]

Did you delete the map.rwm?

[Halie Satanus]

right click on shortcut go to properties at the end of target line type -show_err when you crash in future it'll tell you why

[edcope]

I did delete the rwm file; I'm following my checklist to the letter, which worked up until a few days ago. Halie, will that tell me why it crashed to the menu selection screen or only if it crashes to the desktop? I ask not out of laziness, but because I have currently deleted all Total War programs from my computer; Medieval and Shogun crashed to the desktop on startup without me having modified them in any way, so I've sacrificed these games to save my sanity.

Thanks!

[Halie Satanus]

dont know i hav'nt needed it yet, but i think i did have the same crash to menu with pax britania X, i deleted rwm in bi and rtw a couple of times and then it just worked

you really need to back up/make copies of your files

but i guess you know that now