HELP-Major problem with External Disk Drive and Train Store

[oldalistair]

I have about 40+ routes stored using Train Store on a 40 GB external drive. This worked perfectly. I have a quite fast PC so speed was no problem. But today, for some inexplicable reason, Windows XP changed the letter assigned to the drive (from J to K). Train Store objected to what it interpreted as a path change. It gave me a dialogue to show the path to MSTS. Then it told me to set a folder for its storage. I directed it to the existing folder and was told 'This folder is NOT empty and cannot be used'. No more Train Store and no possibility of Unstoring my 40+ routes!
I found out how to change the drive letter assignment and restored it to the original Drive J. But Train Store still demanded a new folder for storage and refused to run. Have I lost everything or is there any fix?

[ashgray]

Hi

I'm assuming you have MSTS installed on your C drive...

This may take a while but the solution that comes to mind is to physically move the files from their folders on your external drive to the corresponding ones in your main MSTS installation. Once this is done you can uninstall Train Store (from within the program) and re-install.

To get round this problem reoccurring in future, I would suggest altering your system settings to restrict the number of available drive letters that Windows can "see" - make the last available letter the one that Windows normally allocates to your external drive, in your case, J:\. You can do this in Control Panel. That way, Windows cannot assign a different drive letter as there would not be any more letters available to use.

Cheers
Ashley

[buffy500]

If its XP why not just change it back again to the old drive letter ?

[OTTODAD]

But today, for some inexplicable reason, Windows XP changed the letter assigned to the drive (from J to K).

That usually happens if you attach another external data media to your computer before your external hard drive has been connected.

What is using the drive letter J: ?

O t t o

[kevarc]

Did you add something? Is this the first time you reattached the external hard drive since you set up trainstore?

You may want to try this and see if it works. Click on my computer. Right click on the drive and rename it J. I had to do this with a hard drive one time when I added a third hard drive. If something else is using J, you may have to finagle things before you rename it J.

[oldalistair]

I actually run everything from the external disk, including MSTS and Train Store, and have done so for months, switching the drive on and off, without any problems. I did change the drive letter assignment back to the original letter J, but Train Store still seems to have lost its pathways and I have no way to reconfigure it from within an app that refuses to run. I need some way to tell it that nothing has really changed and that it should continue to use the folder where keeps my stored routes. I'll follow the advice to fix the drive letter assignment in future but my present concern is to save all my stored routes.

[ashgray]

Alistair

Re your original concerns, my advice above still stands - you can simply copy your files back to their original locations, using Windows Explorer.

Cheers
Ashley

[JohnOz]

Ashley's right - just copy the files back into your MSTS installation - that will fix one issue. But it won't take you very long to do that, as Train Store uses the same file setup/structure/tree as MSTS does. Drop the Routes folder in Train Store into your Routes folder, and so on - worked for me.

[oldalistair]

Thanks Ashley. I've tried copying a couple of routes back to MSTS and both ran properly. I'll continue with the remainder. It will not take as long as I thought since I was surprised to see how little of the route goes into store. I did not realise that you could Unstore routes manually by drag and drop without dire results.
I'm still foxed by Train Store's inflexibility when it comes to resetting pathways
Thanks again.