SH3 Commander Issue

[bigboywooly]

Is your operating system on C or D ?

[Phantom II]

My Operating System and SH3 are both on C, and D is purely for My Documents.

[JScones]

Originally Posted by bigboywooly

Could well be a Vista issue as Vista retains certain folders even though you think removed or not being retained
Am guessing when you set MultiSH3 to look at D drive for the careers and SH3commander followed that Vista has added back your old dll which is why SH3 is saving on C drive

I think you are pretty close to the mark, pardon the pun. It's so easy for people to get hung up on the symptoms that they miss the cause.

Phantom, some questions:

1. Did you upgrade an XP installation to Vista?
2. Click "Start", then right-click "Documents", then select "Properties", then select the "Location" tab. What is the FULL path displayed?
3. What is the FULL SH3 installation path?
4. What is the FULL SH3Cmdr installation path?

[Chisum]

About the soft, please, can you tell me why I have not an HTML personnal files ? Only a notepad personnal files...

Version 3.1.0.177 with GWX 3.0 Gold + GWX_21.1_Cfg_4_SH3Cmdr3.0.

[JScones]

Most likely because at some stage you have set HTML files to open in Notepad. To fix, open Windows Explorer and navigate to any HTML file. Right click on it, then select "Open With", then select "Choose Program" then highlight your web browser entry under "Recommended Programs", or browse for it if it is not there, then tick "Always use the selected program...", then press OK. (These are XP instructions, they may differ slightly if you are using Vista).

[Chisum]

Oh God ! It works !
Many thanks to this quick and good answer mate !!

[Phantom II]

Originally Posted by JScones

I think you are pretty close to the mark, pardon the pun. It's so easy for people to get hung up on the symptoms that they miss the cause.

Phantom, some questions:

1. Did you upgrade an XP installation to Vista?
2. Click "Start", then right-click "Documents", then select "Properties", then select the "Location" tab. What is the FULL path displayed?
3. What is the FULL SH3 installation path?
4. What is the FULL SH3Cmdr installation path?

1. No, its a fresh Vista Install (Completely formatted the entire computer before installing Vista)
2. D:\
3. C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\SilentHunterIII
4. C:\Program Files\SH3 Commander

Funny thing I noticed, is that if I specify a different folder in My Documents via MultiSH3, then SH3 Commander will look there, except the game itself stills saves the files on my C drive, because you can't specify different drives with MultiSH3.

[JScones]

Wow, a trifecta of problems!

Originally Posted by Phantom II

2. D:\

SH3, SH3Cmdr and MultiSH3 all use the same system call to retrieve your system's "Documents" path (the concept of "My Documents" does not exist in Vista). None "hard code" the path. As you can see, your system says it's on D:\ drive. All three applications (although it's not apparent to you re SH3...yet) are simply going where Vista tells them to go (which, ironically, is where you told Vista to go, thus making your "isn't it a bit silly that there is no way whatsoever to tell SH3 Commander if your Save location isn't in the default location, to look elsewhere" comment a bit silly, LOL). That's why you cannot change the "Documents" path in any of the three applications...it's called maintaining system integrity and consistency. You can now remove all three applications from your crosshairs. They are not the problem here.

And that brings up another concern I have. You should not set your "Documents" folder to a root drive. Apart from being a dangerous practice, it will also upset many applications, including, I believe, the OS. This may be contributing to Vista's redirection back to, presumably, "C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents", which is the default path.

Originally Posted by Phantom II

3. C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\SilentHunterIII
4. C:\Program Files\SH3 Commander

There's oodles of posts just on this forum alone explaining why installing any moddable game to your "Program Files" folder on Vista is not a good idea, so I won't repeat it here. As I suspected, Vista's UAC is wreaking havoc with your install. And if you haven't raised the permissions level on the v1.4 patch, SH3Cmdr, or JSGME if you use it, then your game files will become a confusing mess very quickly.

My recommendation:
1. FULLY uninstall both SH3 and SH3Cmdr, INCLUDING manual removal of the residual files and folders AND MOST IMPORTANTLY the hidden SH3 VirtualStore folder ("C:\Users\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\SilentHunterIII").

2. Following the steps I outlined in my previous post, change your "Documents" folder from "D:\" to something like "D:\Documents" (mine is "F:\My Documents", and I have no problems running SH3 and SH3Cmdr, but I also use XP). If you are adamant that you must use D:\ drive, you can ignore this step, but it may continue to create problems for you.

3. Reinstall both SH3 and SH3Cmdr outside of your Program Files folder, and preferably onto a different drive.

4. Run SH3 once and exit. Then run SH3Cmdr and see what happens.

If SH3 still writes to "C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents" and SH3Cmdr and MultiSH3 still look to "D:\Documents", then I would restore the "Documents" path back to the system default and try again. If that works, I'd change the path to something else and see what happens.

I don't use Vista and I only support SH3Cmdr usage problems, so hopefully someone else can jump in if you continue to have Vista issues. Fundamentally though, IMHO it's important that Vista users understand the effects of Vista's UAC, as it does have the potential to create a great level of frustration otherwise!

[Phantom II]

Nvm guys. I've used RKTools to make the folder on the D Drive a shortcut to the one on the C, so when SH3 Commander tries to load the files on the D Drive, it gets referred to the correct ones on the C Drive, and it all seems to work fine now