Atomic Systems

Hi everyone

Wasn't sure whether this should be on the general discussion section or the help-for-beginners section, but as it's a completely new problem (to me anyway !) that has surfaced after several years' getting to grips with MSTS' endearing little foibles, I hoped this might be the right place to introduce it. I bought the Cambrian 2 route as soon as it came out (even before the update which avoided the problem of either (a) being unable to reach Oswestry at all or (b) finding the entire countryside rendered in white if you did manage to reach the destination) and in general it's a super route, even if it's too much for the older of my two machines which simply crashes whenever I tried to load it. However, the initial choice of activities supplied in the package uses only a small part of the route (and that was part of the original Cambrian anyway) so I've been waiting, like everyone else, for some additional activities to explore more of the route provided. So when the first additional activities appeared on the UK Trainsim site, I downloaded them and they worked well, except for some unfathomable reason they never ever appeared in the Activity Editor. I haven't used the Cambrian 2 route for some months, but when some more activities appeared recently, I downloaded these as well - only to find that the new activities don't appear in the AE as well, and this time both these and the earlier downloaded activities have vanished from the system altogether, leaving only the activities which came on the original DVD ! To compound the mystery, whenever I try to open any of the new activities packaged files with TSunpack, a dialogue box asks me if I want it unpacked to the Cambrian 2 route, and when I click on the 'Yes' box, I then get a succession of messages telling me the activity exists, the various paths and services and traffic exist, and asking me in each case if I want to overwrite them - so presumably the unpackaged activity and all its files is in the system somewhere, though I can find no trace of it at all. I've never had this happen before with activities for any of the other routes, and I wonder if anyone else has encountered it, though I can't find any mention in the forums as yet. Am I missing something obvious here ? The most worrying factor in all this is that I did get the earlier downloaded activities for the route to work originally(though never in AE) but now these have vanished as well..... Help !!

Dave

PS. This was originally posted by mistake in the Rail Simulator forum but was moved as soon as the error was spotted - sorry !

Hi Dave, Lets see what we can do. Are you using Train Store? XP or Vista?

Regards

Ron P

Hi Ron

Thanks for the speedy reply - on this machine (on which Cambrian 2 is installed) I'm running Vista, but as I only have one or two routes installed on it I haven't yet added Train Store - though I do have it on the old machine. At this stage I think I wanted to try to keep everything as simple as possible.....

If you think Train Store would help in some way I can of course add it, though there are one or two issues I'd need to sort out on this machine first.

Any ideas much appreciated

Cheers

Dave

Dave,

Install Train Store and use the Easy option -- you can't go wrong and it makes running complicated big routes possible on a less than top flight PC

And if you do install Trainstore (which I'd strongly recommend) make sure you set it in Vista to run as an Administrator.

Thanks guys

I'll put Trainstore on the new machine at the weekend - this is being written when I should be working, otherwise I'd do it now !

I'll let you know how it goes....

Dave

Hi everyone

Finally solved this long-standing problem while trying to solve another one - isn't it great when that happens ? I was getting so fed up of being told that I couldn't do such and such a thing because I needed to get the administrator's permission, when I'm the owner of the blessed machine in the first place and no one uses it but me, that I took advice and turned off User Account Control. Not only did it solve that problem but when I had another go at opening up the downloaded additional Cambrian 2 activities, they all appeared in the activity editor and work perfectly in the simulator. So for anyone else out there who has met this problem and not been able to fix it, maybe this is a potential solution ? Only problem remaining is the warning that comes up saying I need to click on this button to restore my user account control whenever I boot up the system, but if you do nothing it goes away after a while.....

Dave

PS. Only reason I didn't take the earlier suggestions and install Train Store is that I wanted to re-edit some of the engines and rolling stock, and I didn't want to complicate things till this problem was sorted out - but nothing to stop me now....

Hi dwgowen, you can edit any files i.e. .eng or .wag files while using Trainstore, all you have to do is look in Trainstore for them if they are not in the MSTS Folders and save them as before.
This saves having to unstore everytime you want to edit a file, the only time you need to do this is when using A.E. as it will give you loads of errors when Trainstore has them stored in its folder.

Bob

I suggest you both look at Trainstore Maintenance Mode, which allows you to select and unstore any items of rolling stock so you can use them in creating or modifying an activity. The Help File is pretty good.

Further to Alan's advice I would suggest that you read the manual which comes with the train store program, you can learn alot from it!

Chris

Here is an alternative way of sorting out MSTS problems under Vista.

1) Find the directory Train Simulator (typically in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\)
2) Right click this directory and select Properties.
3) Select the Security Tab.
4) Press Edit button
5) Left click the Users line in the Group or User Names window.
6) In the permissions window below put a tick in the Full Control row in the Allow column.
7) Press Apply and a window will come up showing security changes to the entire MSTS installation.

When this has finished you will have full Read/Write access to MSTS, which is essential for adding or
messing about with stuff.

And if you are using Trainstore you will need to do the same for the Trainstore storage folders.

I'm sure you are correct in this, I have only used Train Store for the Thames Mersey and that was before I got a machine with the rather pointless (in my view) Vista.


Martin