MS Vista

[Hielor]

Do you have the AVG anti-virus installed? Some quick googling suggests that AVG 8 has some issues on Vista, among them the auto-scanning of zip files thing.

If that's the problem, you can try disabling AVG temporarily to unzip, or disabling the scan-zip-files feature, or using a different unzipper like WinZip or WinRAR.

 

[Unidentified Ninja]

Do you have the AVG anti-virus installed? Some quick googling suggests that AVG 8 has some issues on Vista, among them the auto-scanning of zip files thing.

If that's the problem, you can try disabling AVG temporarily to unzip, or disabling the scan-zip-files feature, or using a different unzipper like WinZip or WinRAR.

It may be AVG 8 doing the dirty on zip extraction, and although I did exit AVG, or at least I thought I had, it appeared to still be running. I then disabled all the features that I could, didn't make the slightest difference.
Its also possible that AVG may have alterred a file during extraction. If orbiter still crashes half way through the launch I will make a note of everything I can and then uninstall AVG and extract from the zip again. It may also be that AVG interferes with the running of orbiter too. Ill certainly post back on how I get on.

 

[DaveS]

It may be AVG 8 doing the dirty on zip extraction, and although I did exit AVG, or at least I thought I had, it appeared to still be running. I then disabled all the features that I could, didn't make the slightest difference.
Its also possible that AVG may have alterred a file during extraction. If orbiter still crashes half way through the launch I will make a note of everything I can and then uninstall AVG and extract from the zip again. It may also be that AVG interferes with the running of orbiter too. Ill certainly post back on how I get on.

Sounds like something is very wrong with your computer. I'm running Vista SP1 and have AVG v8 running all the time with no issues at all.

So you should consider returning the computer and have it checked for any hardware problems.


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Another tip: Try any other software that's heavy on the system resources. If it is a problem related to Orbiter and/or AVG, they will run fine and stable. If it is a hardware problem, they too will crash and refuse to start under any circumstances.

 

[Unidentified Ninja]

Strange, now everything works just fine.
Didn't disable AVG at all, only exited the sidebar widget thing which serves no useful purpose. Also installed orulex, DGIV and Orbiter Sound. Will perform a backup of system settings before installing any extra stuff. hopefully, if it all goes pear shaped again, I may be able to recover everything without having to resort to extreme measures. I have installed the orbiter directory in the documents folder instead of the programs folder, where I have always, in the past put it. Perhaps there is an issue regarding vista's programs folder. Having got used to xp, I'm quickly discovering that vista is different, as I find that many commands have either gone or relocated.

Thanx for your time and efforts.

 

[Hielor]

Glad to hear you got it working.

You're right on about Vista's Program Files directory. For some reason, it's read-only, and there's no way to change it, which means that programs which rely on using their directory to store things (just about every program out there) may not work, depending on whether the "Compatibility Files" feature is working that day.

It was done in the name of "security," but to me that's been the absolute most annoying feature of Vista. I wish there were a way to fix it.

 

[Unidentified Ninja]

Glad to hear you got it working.

You're right on about Vista's Program Files directory. For some reason, it's read-only, and there's no way to change it, which means that programs which rely on using their directory to store things (just about every program out there) may not work, depending on whether the "Compatibility Files" feature is working that day.

It was done in the name of "security," but to me that's been the absolute most annoying feature of Vista. I wish there were a way to fix it.

Thanx for the confirmation.
I did notice that by moving folders/files into this directory always launched a number of security dialogs asking for confirmation that I wanted these files in there, the last dialog box was also accompanied by the darkening of the surrounding desktop image. I would have thought that by confirming in a positive manner would be enough to convince vister that this action was exactly what I wanted to achieve. :fool:
Perhaps by making my logon account in vista the admin account may help remove all these irritating dialog boxes from popping up every time I make any changes? :hmm: