Manual Saving does not work (but auto-saving is still fine)

[PerfidiousPorygon]

Hi all,

I have come across a rather strange problem, and I don't know how to solve it. I can no longer manually save any Civ3 game. If I try to manually save, and type in a name for the save file, the file name does not appear when I try to load. Nor can I find the file if I exit out of the game and run a search on my entire PC. It seems like the save file was never created.

What makes this strange is that:

1. Auto-saving still works fine. Every turn, the game makes an auto-save, and I can load those save files just fine. Also, the game runs fine without any issues whatsoever.

2. I've been playing Civ3 on and off since 2016 on the same PC, and I only ran into this problem yesterday, when I started up Civ3 after a long hiatus.

3. If I try to load my old manual saves from 2017 or 2018, the game can load them just fine, and I can play them just fine. But if I try to overwrite an old save file through manual saving, that save file "vanishes" and no longer appears in the saved games folder.


Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? I am not particularly tech-savvy. All I can think of is that the recent Windows updates may have messed some things up, but I don't know how to go about fixing that. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[tjs282]

Sounds (again) like this is possibly a VirtualStore-related problem? But we would need more information to be sure.

Presumably you are running a relatively 'recent' Windows version, i.e. Vista or later? If so, did you install Civ3 in the 'default' location in C:/ProgramFiles/ (which is -- since Vista -- a protected location that only [user-]authorised programs may write to)?

If so, does the game have Admin-privileges, allowing it to write to its own directory -- instead of having everything it does VirtualStored (in what is often a hidden directory)?

If the problem only started recently, it's also possible that a recent Windows update may have over-written some of your previous settings, or reset them to 'factory-defaults' (e.g. re-hiding the VS-location if it was previously visible). So have you tried (temporarily!) rolling back any recent updates?

 

[PerfidiousPorygon]

Sounds (again) like this is possibly a VirtualStore-related problem? But we would need more information to be sure.

Presumably you are running a relatively 'recent' Windows version, i.e. Vista or later? If so, did you install Civ3 in the 'default' location in C:/ProgramFiles/ (which is -- since Vista -- a protected location that only [user-]authorised programs may write to)?

If so, does the game have Admin-privileges, allowing it to write to its own directory -- instead of having everything it does VirtualStored (in what is often a hidden directory)?

If the problem only started recently, it's also possible that a recent Windows update may have over-written some of your previous settings, or reset them to 'factory-defaults' (e.g. re-hiding the VS-location if it was previously visible). So have you tried (temporarily!) rolling back any recent updates?

Hi, thanks for your reply. I actually was able to solve my problem earlier today after two re-installation attempts. The first time, I re-installed Civ3 into the same location as before (Program Files), and that had no effect. I still couldn't manually save. But the second time, I re-installed Civ3 into just C:/ (not in Program Files), and that fixed the problem. I can now manually save and load just fine.

Hopefully, this will be useful for other people with similar issues. And I am running Windows 10, in case that's relevant.

 

[Stew Pid]

I recently updated my PC to windows 10 and the update screwed my civ 3 saving ability, a reinstall solved the problem for me.