Missing Course Files

[Weeler]

OK......can someone please explain this one: In my Links 2003 game, in the Course Manager tab, I can SEE both 'Arcadia Bluffs' and "Mauna Kea' courses.
When I select either course to play them, they both load and play just fine. BUT, if (outside of the game, say in the APCD ), neither of the course file.crz's are on the list. WTH ? If I do a C Drive search for the course files.....nothing comes up ! BUT, as I said.....they are IN the game and are fully playable. To me, that defies logic. Any thoughts on why this is happening, and how I can get the courses to "show up" in the course file
listing again ??

Thanks for any help.................Ron

[umanfly2boot]

Hi ,
Just by what your describing , my first thought was that somehow , even though they are related by files , you have a registery error of some sort .
Do you run a registry cleaner program weekly like i do , usually i do open up ccleaner and do a registry scan to see if im showing any errors .
This doesnt affect anything on your system and gives you a reason to clear out any errors if you want to .
2ndly , i use Auslogics Registery Cleaner , and do the same thing , and then resolve any problems if there are some.
Most errors on ones Windows 98- Windows 11 Systems infantisimal missfiled erros of programs not used of deleted or changed programs, and it leaves fragments in the registry when you use them at other times . Removing them helps your system to run faster and load quicker .

[Big Sexy JC]

Ron,

My first guess would be that the courses that aren't showing up aren't in the Courses subfolder in the links directory and were added to your course library through the course manager. You can browse to a CRZ through the course manager and add it to Links without actually putting the file in the course directory. APCD (and I'm certainly not an APCD expert) requires the courses to be in a certain folder (probably the course subfolder) to see them? I could be completely wrong here but I at least think it's a possible cause.

[X-Morph]

maybe .. just maybe those are microsoft pay to play courses and not meant to be worked on ? ...... manua kea is one of the courses that came with the original CD ( and Download ) -version as far as i remember ..........just my two pennys here :) it also may be possible those course files are " "locked by developer " ones wich means you wont be able to edit until you find a way to unlock the .CRZ file .....

[pmgolf]

Ron, other than the APCD, what is this list that the courses are not on. They show in the directory they're in in Windows File Manager, don't they?

Pete

[Adelade]

Just in case your circumstance doesnt match any of the above mentioned, another possibility I could think of:
Both those courses have a different filename than the course display name, I dont know which search version and prompt you used but perhaps you looked for exact matches of "Arcadia Bluffs" and "Mauna Kea", with the filenames being slightly different ("Arcadia The Bluffs Course" and "MKGC2024_Z").

[Weeler]

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions guys. I wrote that post in haste yesterday because I was so frustrated ! I left out a few keey factors, which I'll add here, and tell you what ultimately happened. ( I DO have both courses showing in my course file now, BTW )

About a week to 10 days ago, my APCD crashed bigtime. I lost ALL my objects and textures. Everything was blank. When I right clicked on "properties" to look for a previous version, it told me there weren't any ! The only choice I had was to download a fresh copy of the APCD ( which, of course only has the very basic planting objects and texture set.) ( I'll work on getting them back to what they were as I go along ).

In any "modifications" I make to unlocked courses ( just for MY preference and use alone ), I would always access the APCD as "Run as Administrator".
That's what I did this time, and those two course files weren't there as I said. I searched everywhere for them....but one thing I didn't do was simply
left click on the APCD desktop icon and open it normally ( not as administrator ), and amzingly enough there they were !! Like I keep telling all you guys I'm in contact with on LC, I'm really poor with file management and transfers, changing file types, etc. I literally have to have someone step me through a process slowly with screenshots, etc. until I get it. So.....in this case I STILL really don't understand why the courses wouldn't show up when I tried to run it as administrator, but are there when I don't . I'm sure most of you probably know.....so please clue me in. At this point, I'm up and
running on the basic version of the APCD, and will try to work on planting courses with what I have for awhile.

Thanks again, for those who have offered suggestions. The things that you mentioned are important for me to keep in mind as well !

Ron

[Weeler]

Oh, BTW, the Mauna Kea course I was referencing is Steven Lucey's version, not the stock MS version for the record.

[Adelade]

If you experience a difference in file access between running as admin or not, it sounds like it is the VirtualStore thing. I bet you will find different sets of files in your usual APCD location (when saved while running as admin) and the other one at C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86) and then the sub-folders APCD (or whatever the APCD folder is called) and then Courses. AppData is a hidden folder.

See this post by gator if wanting more info about the VirtualStore: viewtopic.php?p=2138#p2138