Starting all over again... again...

So I was easing back into mapping, and getting online after being away for a year due to moving and everything else... getting back into the game, so to speak...when my laptop got fried!

Yep... our cat, Loki, lived up to his name. He got impatient with me, for not giving him enough attention... or maybe I wasn't feeding him quickly enough...and so he knocked over an almost empty glass on our dining room table. Notice I said ALMOST empty. He launched it, and the little bit of liquid left inside, right onto the keyboard of my laptop...which, because it was a laptop, seeped down INTO the laptop in a matter of seconds. Bye bye two year old laptop. It figures... my kids have had their laptops for years. They are beat up, tape holding them together, but they still have the ability to function, for the most part. I took great care with mine... after two years, it still looked brand new. And it's dead.

It took us a while, but I finally was able to replace it. Just got my new laptop yesterday. So now I'm in the process of restoring everything I lost.

Good news... most of everything I had was backed up on an external hard drive, so I didn't actually lose much... and know someone that can help me restore everything else, and move it from my old laptop to this one.

Bad news... I, once again, find myself having to download, and reinstall EVERYTHING.

The silver lining in all of this, is that my old laptop was seriously disorganized. I had been taking some time to organize my files, and such. So now, I can set this new laptop up with much better organization than the old one... meaning hopefully I will be able to find things better. Also, I went from an HP to a Lanovo, with a higher processing speed, and better graphics, which hopefully will mean better maps.

So give me a few weeks to get everything set up again... and hopefully I will be back to mapping... once again...

Comments

  • yeah... it wasn't pretty. The worst part about it... the laptop still works... as long as you don't need the screen to see anything!!! Basically, my laptop doesn't realize it's died.

    It boots up, runs... but the screen is black with a few low light level bands running up and down the screen.

    I had tech open her up, and remarkably, for the most part it's still intact and in working order... except for about 4 or 5 transistors up in the top left corner of the motherboard. Just a few tiny transistors that are fried. If the tech had the micro precision tool, he might have even been able to fix it... but it's an EXPENSIVE fix. And he doesn't have the needed tool. So it runs fine... there's just no way to see anything.

    So now I'm in the process of downloading cc3+ et al, yet again.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Welcome back, Storm!!!! :D

    It will be lovely to see you doing your thing again :D

    And keep that cat firmly shut OUT of the dining room when you are working!!!!
  • I wish it were that simple! There's no door... just a door way, and it's an open kitchen/dining room. It's more a dining nook. Cat is fed in the kitchen... no way to keep him out. It's more keeping open drinks far enough away from the laptop so that if a drink spills, I can scoop up the laptop in time.
  • i was wondering where you'd gone off to. I've been super busy these days, (mom is in intensive care on a vent right now) with family crap, but still managing to fiddle around on a map i've been working on late a night. Missed ya, Storm! Welcome back - and get to mapping! The Atlas awaits!
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    Good to see you back in the game. Shame about the laptop, but at least you are set now.

    As for cats, I recommend using large bottom-heavy drinking mugs instead of glasses for everything. My cat loves to push things, but he doesn't manage to topple those. As a bonus, they are also solid enough to survive a fall to the floor, so no glass shards for the poor kitty to step in either.
  • Welcome Back Storm! Glad to see your laptop situation is getting sorted. Can't wait to see more of your maps!
  • I know that feeling of a drink being spilled onto a laptop. I did 48oz of chocolate milk once. I was lucky, was able to unplug and pull the battery in seconds. Then took the thing completely apart, dried it and washed with iso alchol and after it dried, it all worked. Was very scared there for a few hours *G*

    Anyway, welcome back, and lesson to everyone, backup your stuff! :)
  • pool7pool7 Traveler
    Sorry to hear about the laptop and all the trouble that comes with it.
    Did the liquid fall in the screen itself, or maybe one of the ports in the side/back of the laptopt?
    As far as I know, most laptops (for years now) have a "system" that drains liquid that falls in the keyboard (it's not 100% effective, but works most of the times, especially for small amounts).
  • Ah, yes. Cats will punish us for our misdeeds, such as not petting them on demand. Demanding furry little taskmasters they are. I hope you can get all your software and settings restored, soon.
  • well, almost all of my stuff was backed up on my external... so no major losses there. I have someone that can retrieve the rest, so I'm good. I actually have almost everything installed in this new laptop... the only thing I'm missing is the add ons to cc3+ - namely, the CSUAC et al. I have backups for those on the external too... it's just a matter of installing everything. But I also have to remember the RIGHT way to do it, so that I don't end up with the problem I had what Remy... 6 o 7 months ago? Anyway, Vintyri walked me through it all through emails a good while back... and I saved all the emails... I am just having the arduous task of FINDING them... the emails I need with the instructions on how to do it all.

    Once I get all the extras installed...again... then I SHOULD be back in business. All of my maps and previous maps are on my external.
  • just a heads up.

    It looks like it's going to take me a little bit longer. I have everything installed except the extra textures I found on my own, but after installing all of the addons I had before, I opened up cc3+ to find that ALL of my toolbar icons are missing. Not just the stuff from the Vintryi collection, CSUAC, Bogies stuff and the DA... all of the profantasy toolbar icons are missing too... including the ones along the very top ie: file, view, etc....

    So right now, I can't create a new map, because I don't have a button that allows me to access that part of the program.

    I've already run the latest updates, and the menu_recovery.bat that comes with the archives. And still nothing. And yes, I know about update 16. I've already downloaded and installed it. Still didn't help... so I've already put in word with the Vintyri project that I'm having problems, and I'm just waiting for them to get back to me. We are on a 6-8 hour time difference I believe. I'll keep everyone posted.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    edited April 2018
    Try loading a different menu file. Type MENUDM @dungeon.mnu followed by enter on the command line. You can also try other menu files like @fcw32.mnu and @city.mnu

    The various Vintyri installers should also back up your original menu files before making changes, so look in the CC3+ data directory for a menu folder, which contains a backup folder. Here you should find your menu files, and you can copy them out to the main data directory. You'll need to rename them to get rid of the date in the filename though, make sure they are named exactly as the original file to replace (and if you rename them after copying them, remember to remove the menu file already present, as you cannot rename a file to the same name as an existing file in the folder)
    If that works, you can then run menu_recovery.bat again to reapply the Vintyri changes.
  • DaltonSpenceDaltonSpence Mapmaker
    edited April 2018
    I had a similar experience recently. I had to uninstall my CSUAC 2.0 add-on (low disk space warning) and my dungeon, city and fcw32 menu files disappeared. Fortunately I did back them up; unfortunately I added the Perspectives add-on since then; fortunately I had a recent customized version of the dungeons menu I was using (see CA 17: Creating An Interactive Atlas for details*) for a personal project. I'm currently doing a line-by-line edit of these menus to make sure I'm up to date.

    (*Note: I originally made some significant suggestions about this Annual on the cc2-l mailing list that were later appended to the description of the issue as "Additional Material", but this seems to have disappeared. Fortunately I saved this addendum and may repost it if there is any interest.)

    Correction: ACKK! I made the recent custom menu from an older one. Turns out I must have uninstalled the Perspective add-on between those two events but before the back-up, so I could have copied the backup menus without changes. Things get confusing when you do this manually. :(
  • lol... well, I've learned enough from past experiences, my .mnu's are backed up in a separate folder before I started all of this. I just wasn't expecting everything to disappear. But I will try that, Remy
  • Nothing changed. Don't worry, I'm sure Mark will get me sorted, as soon as he returns. He told me he was going to be away from his computer until about 230 pm my time... I think.. which is about 15 minutes from now.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    edited April 2018
    If you haven't gotten this fixed yet, check your @.ini in the CC3+ installation directory (c:\program files (x86)\ProFantasy\CC3Plus by default). This file is a plain text file that you can open in notepad, and it contains only one line of text, the path to your CC3+ data directory. If the path here is incorrect (Either from this file being changed/deleted, or from the data directory itself being changed/deleted) you will get the exact symptom you describe.
    If you installed everything with the default paths, the first and only line of this file should read
    C:\ProgramData\ProFantasy\CC3Plus

    None of the Vintyri installers should touch this file, but the documentation do refer to this file for helping you find the location of your data directory, so if you opened this file and accidentally introduced a change to it, this can occur.
  • Interesting that. Could I move my CC3Plus data directory from my laptop hard drive to my flash drive if I changed the @.ini file? (The latter is actually twice the size of the former.) Or would it be safer to uninstall everything and re-install it there?
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    You can move the directory just as you wish. The @.ini is the only reference to the data directory (Unless you've manually inserted images in your maps and used absolute paths instead of relative), so just shut down CC3+, move the directory, and change @.ini accordingly, and everything will work just fine. I would certainly recommend this procedure over reinstalling. Just make sure you move your entire data directory, as the structure of this needs to be intact, and obviously, ensure that the path in @.ini is correct.
  • Just to let everyone know, as of yesterday, my cc3+ is back on track, and I can, once again, work on my WIP's with no fear of red x's. I have only found one minor curiosity, that I need to sort out. I went back to work on my latest color wash map, and the process doesn't seem to be working any more. It does, up to the point where my laptop fried. But the few changes I made yesterday, the color wash doesn't seem to be working for last few symbols I placed, so I need to figure out what's going on there.

    Other than that, I am back up and running! Yay!!!
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