Disaster

[MartinH]

No not the football - far more important than that.

My activity editor has broken. I made a mess of setting up an event so pressed cancel. The next thing I know, there is nothing showing on the map apart from the sidings (just like when you are asked to select a siding to pick up cars, except that I had cancelled that operation). This was easily overcome by ticking the various options in the view menu, but when I selected "verify start state" my train was missing. In fact no trains, player, AI or stationary, appear any more. I've restarted the editor and even restarted the computer but no joy - all activities in all routes. All the options in the view menu are ticked so it's not that.

I'm in the process of backing up my routes, sounds and trains folders ready for a complete reinstall, but this will be a very long operation and I'd like to avoid it if possible. Any ideas?

Martin

[Timcourt1]

don't know but this might be useful, used it for consists might work for other AE functions too!

If you can't see the consists in the 2D view you do not need to re-install. Here is what I did tonight to get them back. I cannot test it again until the problem re-surfaces but I am fairly sure the fix is repeatable.
I suspected that some of the settings for the activity editor were becoming corrupt. As the consists did not come back after re-starting the AE, even after re-booting the computer, I thought that there must be a file somewhere that the AE uses to store its settings.

I searched the train sim directory for the most recently changed files after making some changes to the AE settings and guess what? None of the files had changed in the last day.

I went trolling through the registry next. I found the section where train sim keeps its data and deleted all the keys starting with 'AE_'. Hoping that when re-started the AE would detect the lack of previous settings and generate defaults for itself.

It worked!! All the settings were reset, and the consists came back to the 2D view.

If you have the same problem here are the steps to follow. Condensed.

- Run regedit. (Start->Run-> type in 'regedit' then press OK)

- Search the registry for HWRenderer. (Ctrl-F in the regedit window, then type in 'HWRenderer' in the search field, I search only for keys). It will take some time to find it during which the regedit window does not change at all, there is no progress indicator.

- When HWRenderer is found, on the right window pane click on the first entry starting with 'AE_', then hold the shift key and click on the last entry starting with 'AE_'. All the 'AE_' entries should be selected. Release the shift key. Press the 'Delete' key and delete all the entries.

- Start the activity editor.

- Load an activity and ensure that view->service info is checked.

- Select tools->verify starting state

- The consist should appear in the 2D view.

I don't know why the name of the registry section is 'HWRenderer' but there you go. You can save your copy of the registry, or just the affected section before performing the above steps if you feel a little unsure.

I hope this works for all of you.

The above are the demented ramblings on of my evil twin brother and I cannot be held accountable if your following of the above steps leads to any kind of catastrophe, including you having to re-install train-sim, which was what you were trying to avoid in the first place but would probably ended up having to do anyway so what have you lost?

[Neptune50006]

I've used this method twice to recover from problems. Once when I lost all my AI trains in the 2D view, and once when I lost a load of action/location points in the 2D view. Worked both times so you should be OK.

[MartinH]

Tim

You can tell your twin brother that he's an absolute genius and I owe him a pint.

Worked perfectly.

Thanks

Martin

[peterdore]

Thanks Tim it worked for me aswell.

Does anyone know why the AE does this? is it a bug in the editor?
once again many thanks




pete

[37180sirdyfed]

When HWRenderer is found, on the right window pane click on the first entry starting with 'AE_', then hold the shift key and click on the last entry starting with 'AE_'. All the 'AE_' entries should be selected. Release the shift key. Press the 'Delete' key and delete all the entries..............


I have managed to locate the HWRenderer... but can only find the file named "ab"... somehow I can't find "AE_"... I can't seem to be able to do anything with the HWRenderer file apart from right click.. then:- Modify, Delete or Rename.. Double click on it.. and I get the response "Edit String".. Anyone got any further ideas?

[fairlie]

Activity Editor has MS's "Timed Crash" Feature....

[bigvern]

Interesting. It's fairly well known the RE uses the registry and can damage it if the programme or PC crashes while using it and the registry is open. So the AE accesses it too.

I may have related this before, but in fact the RE even remembers track that you may have placed on a route, but started over. One of my routes I ran into problems so scrapped it, deleted the folder, emptied the recycle bin etc. Did a new RGE and started over, however when I got to the location were track had been laid previously (coming in slightly higher) on going into wireframe view there was all the original track from the deleted route under the terrain. Scary and no wonder the tdb and rdb are so prone to crashing.

[markw]

I recently had a strange situation when I deleted LGV med 1 to install LGV Med 2 - everything seemed fine, but no image was displayed. According to Program Manager the programme was running, and I could get into other things, but the screen was black and no sound came out when trying to access the main part of the game.

The cure? I deleted two routes, a host of unused consists and virtually all activities. No problems since, despite reinstalling one route.

I wonder if this phenomenon was caused by route changes to LGV Med 2, which would have changed the route database, even though I deleted v1?

Ah well, we'd have nothing to talk about if the program was bug free I suppose.

[saddletank]

when I got to the location were track had been laid previously (coming in slightly higher) on going into wireframe view there was all the original track from the deleted route under the terrain. Scary and no wonder the tdb and rdb are so prone to crashing.

That must have spooked you. I've not come across this before (and I've done some stupid things in RE in my time).