Missing .sav files in Vista?

[krakedhalo]

So, very strange problem going on with my current GOTM. I play the game, everything works fine, I win, I go to the GOTM site to submit my game, and the .sav is nowhere to be seen in my saves folder. It must actually BE in there though, since if I load up Civ (this is PtW) I can load the game and play it just fine. However, no saves from any point in this game can be found when I look in my file system. EDIT: NO autosaves are present whatsoever. What's going on?

Windows Vista, Civ Chronicles, PtW, all the patches, etc etc.

I don't have any saves I can submit for the GOTM, so I'd like to get this figured out quickly, thanks. Other, previous GOTM's saves are visible, never had this happen before.

 

[krakedhalo]

Okay, so apparently this has to do with the User Account Control settings. For future reference only, since my files are now gone entirely. Months ago I had UAC turned off. Turned it back on a few weeks back, prior to starting this GOTM. No saves appeared in my file system views, though they were still there since I could load them from within Civ. Remembering that I'd made this change, I just went back and turned UAC off again. Now new saves appear in the directory, but the GOTM saves I wanted are gone, and I can't access them from within Civ either. Completely gone. I HATE VISTA!

 

[Macezek]

Well, what happens is to protect your Program Files and Windows folders, it takes files that can me modified and moves them to your Users directory, making shadow copies in the original locations. That way if malicious software wanted to attack a file, it would only touch virtual shadow copies that could just be erased and replaced from copies of the real files in the Users directory. All of the saves are probably there, somewhere on your account name under Users. Civ will see the files like there was no change, but you won't find them. NOTE: This only happens if you go with the defaults, and install it to Program Files.
Unfortunately, when UAC is turned off and on more than once, it has a tendency to loose track of files because of the virtualization thing. And thats what happened in your case, unless you can find the saves somewhere deep in your Users directory.
To avoid all of this with leaving UAC on, you could've just installed Civ3 to a custom directory, like C:\Games\Civilization 3 . That way UAC wouldn't touch it because it's not on the list of directories that have to be monitored.