Tech Help Needed

[Beta]

Here is the situation - I am a heavy civ3 pbem player. All is running well until I get my hands on a copy of Mig Alley, an older flight sim I have been looking for. It is a new, unopened copy of the game.

I load the game - it runs OK, I give it a spin. I come back to my civ3 life - which occupies 99.99% of my gaming time, and things are different.

All my saves have a new icon - whether they are sitting in my e-mail inbox, or in the saves folder. The ones in the mail folder have 3 little red dots on them - and the ones in the folder (and believe me - there are hundreds of them) - all say MIG SAVE in big red letters and are labelled as a "Mig Document". It has affected all the Civ PTW saves as well.

So - I uninstall Mig Alley - no effect.

I uninstall and re-install Civ3Conquests - no effect.

I download and install a new version of Directx - DirectX9c I think it was. Ah ha! It changes the icon back to the old civ3 save icon - in both my e-mail inbox and my save folder - BUT - they are still called "Mig Documents". To be honest - I can't recall what they were called before - but I am sure it wasn't this.

Interestingly enough - this effected my C&C saves, but not others such as my Shogun, Total War saves.

And one other piece of info - newly created saves in civ3 are showing up with the correct icon, but still labelled Mig Document. However, both the old and new saves load OK and appear to play OK. The next test is to send one of the pbem saves off to the next player to see if it plays Ok there - I presume it will - but what sort of file it shows up being labelled as.

You can probably tell from the above that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a computer guru.

Therefore, any advice is welcome. Thank you.

[Daddy-O]

Hi.

Never been lucky enough to play Civ3 or Mig Alley. Mother says they are too violent. But when Mother isn't looking I do managed to get on the computer.

It looks like Mig Alley associated the file extention used for the save files with Mig Alley. We can re-associate the Civ3 save files with Civ3, but that will change the icons and association for Mig Alley. It's up to you. The files themselves will not change.

Find a Civ3 save file. Right click on it. The menu that appears should have an "Open With..." option. Click on it.

The Open With window will open. Select Civ3. If it's not listed use the Browse button and find the Civ3 exe. Select it.

Make sure the "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" checkbox is checked.

Click OK.

All of your Civ3 & Mig Alley save icons should now be Civ3 icons. If you prefer the the Mig Alley icon switch back. Note: When you double click on a file with this extention which ever program it is associated with, will open.

It's a Windows thing. Windows can only associate a file extention with one program.

enjoy

[Beta]

Originally posted by skrobism
Hi.

Never been lucky enough to play Civ3 or Mig Alley. Mother says they are too violent. But when Mother isn't looking I do managed to get on the computer.

Violent? In civ 3 all you have to deal with are barbarians and razing cities and in Mig Alley getting shut down. With computers one has to deal with firewalls, and file deletions, and file corruptions, and viruses. Very scary. No thanks - I'll stick to my games.

skrobism - many thanks - giving it a whirl now.

[Beta]

Ok - doesn't look like it worked.

To start with - I assume the exe file was the one with the civ3 icon on it. It isn't labelled it as such, but it is the program which clearly starts civ3.

So - I do that - civ 3 looks like it wants to start up - you get the initial small screen, but without the options on it - and then it is gone. The save in question still says Mig Document, as do all the others. But the Civ3 program now shows up when you click on 'open with.'

[vmxa1]

First run Dxdiag and check the display tab to see if all three functions are enabled.

If you are using the windows explorer, set it to details and see what the extention is labeled.

Then check the property setting for display to see if it is at least 1024. You can do this a number of ways, but right clicking on the desktop and chose properties is easy.

[conmcb25]

Beta you always seem to have issues

Play MORE CIV, and stop screwing around with those other trivial games

[Beta]

Originally posted by vmxa1
First run Dxdiag and check the display tab to see if all three functions are enabled.

If you are using the windows explorer, set it to details and see what the extention is labeled.

Then check the property setting for display to see if it is at least 1024. You can do this a number of ways, but right clicking on the desktop and chose properties is easy.

Ok - will do. Thanks!

[Beta]

Originally posted by conmcb25
Beta you always seem to have issues

Play MORE CIV, and stop screwing around with those other trivial games

That's cause I only know enough about computers to play games. And you are right about the civ and other games. I really don't know why I bother - I check them out - maybe play them a handful of times, and that's it.

[Beta]

Originally posted by vmxa1
First run Dxdiag and check the display tab to see if all three functions are enabled.

They are.

If you are using the windows explorer, set it to details and see what the extention is labeled.

I don't follow this. The extension on what?

Then check the property setting for display to see if it is at least 1024. You can do this a number of ways, but right clicking on the desktop and chose properties is easy.

Yup - 1024.

[Wittlich]

And here I thought from the thread's title that Beta was requesting assistance in his "Tech Research" efforts!

But sadly, I don't have any advice for your current save file rewording Beta. Execpt that maybe you should just stick with Civ games like the rest of us.

[Beta]

Originally posted by Wittlich
And here I thought from the thread's title that Beta was requesting assistance in his "Tech Research" efforts!

But sadly, I don't have any advice for your current save file rewording Beta. Execpt that maybe you should just stick with Civ games like the rest of us.

Yes - I am getting that message loud and clear.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Beta

I don't follow this. The extension on what?

Most computer files are in the format of NAME.EXT where NAME is the name of the file and EXT is the 'extension'. Examples are .exe for the 'Executable' file, the file that runs most programs; .doc for Microsoft Word Document files and .sav for savefiles of many games, including Civ3.

Once you have enabled the 'Details' view as mentioned above, in the window with your savefiles in it you should be able to see each file in the above format. If the extension is not .sav then right click and rename the file, changing only the extension to .sav

Then try.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Beta


That's cause I only know enough about computers to play games. And you are right about the civ and other games. I really don't know why I bother - I check them out - maybe play them a handful of times, and that's it.

Funnily enough, I started out as you, and all I know from computers comes from the endless difficulties with trying to get said games to work and keep working. Oh, and IRC.

[vmxa1]

Beta the icon has no real meaning, it is just there for you to be able to recoqnize the file easily.

If you change preference for some things such as zip file you can get a new icon represention. Nothing really changes. You see this in XP if you use the default tool for zips and then switch to Winrar.

So other than the icon are things not working? If so what is failing and how.

Can you post one of the files here?

[vondrack]

Yeah, Bruce, ignore the whole thing. It's just the simplistics of Windows - they are only able to associate one kind of an icon (and one "document type") with a given extension (.SAV in this case). It means squat what icon you see, it will still work.

It was bad thinking on Mig Alley creators part, since grabbing the generic .SAV extension for just "their" saves is a bit arrogant...

But safely ignore it, it's just cosmetics.