[BTS] Cannot save

[Steelchampion]

As soon as I enter a game, I get an error message saying that it cannot create the autosave file. If I try to manually save, it errors. Every 3 turns I get the message pop-up saying that it cannot autosave.

I've not found much info on this from Googling & searching these threads - a few people have suggested modifying the permissions of the folders, and removing read-only, but read-only instantly reapplies once deselecting, and all of the folders and subfolders in my saved games folder are full access to myself and the admin account (which is everyone). Another suggestion has been to run as administrator, but that has not helped either.

Now, it lets me manually save to my desktop, however this is no good for multiplayer - my wife has exactly the same problem, and if she tries to join a game which I've loaded from the file saved to my desktop then the lobby just locks up and errors after a while.

To clarify - this is not a multiplayer-only issue as this happens whether I try to play solo or multi.

If I change the location of the save from the default location to my desktop, then it saves, but then it will not transfer the data to my wife when playing multiplayer and loading from that save, presumably because it's trying to copy my save to her default save location which is also seemingly blocking the game from writing to.

https://imgur.com/a/CRNXH

My logic is telling me that this is a Windows issue, but if this was an issue everyone who uses Win 10 had, I presumably would be seeing an awful lot of posts about this, but that is not the case.



I have included my dxdiag and I am running BTS from Steam.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[leif erikson]

Do you have an autosave folder located in that directory?

 

[Steelchampion]

There's a file named "auto" in both the single and multi folders

 

[leif erikson]

Should be located at: C:\Users\leif\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single\auto

My version is disk, not STEAM. Have not heard of this before, this was just an obvious guess.

Let's see if anyone else knows.

 

[Steelchampion]

Yeah, my location is: C:\Users\(username)\Documents\My Games\beyond the sword\Saves\single\auto

I really hope someone knows - be a real shame not to be able to play anymore

Edit: I forgot to mention that I've also tried reinstalling, and removing the entire beyond the sword directory from the "my games" folder and then verifying through Steam.

 

[leif erikson]

If you want to play, you could always go into the configuration file and set autosaves to 0 to turn it off and make saves yourself?

 

[Lemon Merchant]

You mentioned trying to set the permissions. Does your administrator account, or your account have full control in the auto folder? Like this:

This is Windows 7, but the concept is the same. My auto and save folders are set for read only as well, but the full control permission overrides that. Note that my setting is for full control for all users, Admin (me), Administrator accounts, and all users. See if you can set it that way.

IIRC, sometimes Steam doesn't play nice with Windows 10. It does odd things to Civ4 mods, it doesn't surprise me that it might do something weird to saves, too.

 

[Steelchampion]

@Merchant: It does have full control (and for both SYSTEM, me, and administrators) mine looks almost identical to yours

@Leif: That would be fine if I only wanted to play single player, but with my wife having the same identical problem, loading from my manual desktop save becomes a problem - the game seems to want to copy the save file from me to her default save location when she joins my loaded game, which is apparently un-writable

Really appreciating the support by the way

 

[Steelchampion]

I FIXED IT!

So it turns out that Bitdefender (which both me and the wife have) was blocking the game from creating a save file. I've not experienced that before with Bitdefender and it does not give any pop-up message or anything to indicate that it is blocking anything.

For anyone else who uses Bitdefender and is trying to play Civ IV - open your Bitdefender and click on the alerts icon, select "application access blocked" and click the little slider to allow access.

 

[leif erikson]

Congrats. Would never have guessed.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I never would have guessed either. Impressive work!

 

[Henricus]

I have found that the same problem can be caused by Windows Defender.
To resolve it go to:
- Windows Defender Security Center
- Virus & threat protection
- Virus & threat protection settings
- Manage Controlled folder access
- Allow an app through Controlled folder access
- Add an allowed app: Civ4BeyondSword.exe (C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Civilization IV Complete\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 Complete\Beyond the Sword)