Can't Save Games in non Admin Account

[kabing]

My husband has Civ III on his computer, running XP. He plays it out of an Admin account and has no problems saving. But I play it out of a different, plain User Account, and I can't save. I can tell it to save, and it will show the dialog, but when I click the o.k. button, the file is not saved..nor am I warned about this.

Sometimes (but only sometimes!) I can drill back up the file structure and then back down into my user account and save the files on my desktop. But Civ III throws an error when I try to open them.

Any ideas?

 

[Furiey]

Welcome to CFC!

I had to change the permissions on the save folder to make sure that I (and the game) had full control, as default they were read only. As you are not an administrator you may have to get your husband to do this as it may not let you. You should be able to check the permissisions to see if this is the problem or not.

 

[kabing]

Thanks for the suggestion. Sorry for the delay, it took a while for us to get around to trying this. He can reset the folder, but it doesn't stick. He turns off the Read Only setting, but as soon as he or I check the properties again, it's back to Read Only. Windows Explorer tells him to move it to the Shared folder to share with all users, but of course then Civ III can't find the Saves folder. When he starts a new game and saves it, it creates a new Saves folder in the usual place.

kabing

 

[Turner]

Try moving the folder from the Civ saves directory to the shared folder. Then create a shortcut to that folder, and put it the civ folder. Make sure you name it "Saves" and not "Shortcut to saves".

This might not work. Been a while since I've messed with accounts on a non-domain machine. But if you can make them a power user, try that.

 

[Furiey]

If you find browsing to the folder difficult you could try setting WindowsFileBox=1 in your ini file. I'm not sure if it works in vanilla Civ 3 or only Beyond the Sword. If it works it will use the standard windows browse to let you find the file rather than the Civ one. I find it easier to use if I am navigating to different directories. Sometimes you have to use Alt-Tab to get it to come up as it occasionally hides behind the Civ window.

 

[Turner]

That is a valid .ini switch for Civ3. But it may not be able to save the game if it doesn't have access to the folder it wants access to.

 

[Furiey]

It's been a while since I played with Vanilla Civ 3 so I couldn't remember off hand.

It will not allow you to save in a folder that you do not have rights to save in, but it may make it easier to browse to another folder.

 

[Turner]

It's possible the game will crash because it can't save to the save directory. I'm thinking you can turn autosaves off, and that may help...probably an .ini switch somewhere.