Please help, this is scary...

[AngelicCarrot]

This has probably happened before but...

Whenever I make a new project, the folder won't show up, it says it doesn't exist when I try to bring it up.

And also, it deletes my projects.

What the heck is going on? O__o; And yes, I have vista, and it freezes a lot.

[Formedras]

The obvious part 1 is "Backup your projects." After all, if ANYTHING like that happens, it's time to make sure you minimize those problems.

Second is redownload Ren'Py. If you don't like JEdit, get 6.7.0. If you do, get 6.7.1. Try it again. Perhaps your download (or even your decompression) was corrupted.

Third, make sure you have at least 1GB of RAM and Service Pack 1. Vista stops dying on anykey when SP1 is installed, and the GB of RAM makes sure that you're not screwing yourself. (My mother's desktop is a Vista Home Basic machine, and I use Ren'Py 6.7.0. SP1 stopped the problems with the system, and upgrading from 512MB to 2GB of RAM stopped the slowness. I found about Ren'Py after this and I never had a problem, except for trying to use SciTE for Ren'Py 6.7.1, and that doesn't work on this XP Pro system I'm typing on right now either.)

If all of this fails, try going over to Linux. Assuming you don't want to do dangerous partitioning, you'll want to use Ubuntu so that you can just give up 7 or so GB on your Windows partition without making things hard on your life.

[Hentai Senshi]

This has probably happened before but...

Whenever I make a new project, the folder won't show up, it says it doesn't exist when I try to bring it up.

And also, it deletes my projects.

What the heck is going on? O__o; And yes, I have vista, and it freezes a lot.

Vista is hiding your files. (Since programs being able to create files anywhere they like is a security risk, Vista doesn't allow that. Since Windows programs tend not to handle permission denied errors well, (and newbies tend to get annoyed when they get told they don't have permission to do something), instead of telling the program that it couldn't create the file, it lets the program think that the file creation succeeded normally. I _THINK_ it actually creates the file in a different directory than the one you tried to make it in, but I'm not entirely certain that it doesn't just silently delete them or something similarly inane. However, Vista doesn't seem to redirect READ accesses reliably.) Search your hard disk to see where it's actually putting the files.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to control the file-redirection 'feature' (It's been a long time since I last had to use Vista, thank the gods below.). Formedras' recommendations are worth applying, though.

[ficedula]

The redirected files will be in a subfolder off your user folder - e.g. c:\Users\YourName\...

Not sure of the exact location as I don't have a Vista machine to hand. But if that's what happened, it doesn't just drop the data totally - it IS on your hard disk. Just not in C:\Program Files...

[Jake]

Vista is hiding your files. (Since programs being able to create files anywhere they like is a security risk, Vista doesn't allow that.

Man, I'm beginning to wonder whether I have a blessed version of Vista or something. Not only am I never affected by pretty much any of the various fatal problems that rumourmongers on the Internet claim Vista is infested with, I also can't reproduce this; I'm on Home Premium, I've got UAC turned on, I'm not running as an Administrator, I don't remember doing anything security-compromising to make my life easier since I started using Vista... I unzip Ren'Py to within Program Files, click 'Continue' to all the File System Permission checks that come up, run Ren'Py, create a new project, hit the 'Open Game Directory' option, and... the game directory just created opens.

(I'll say it again - I've been using Vista for a year now, including doing a fair bit of development and gaming, and the only real problem I've had with it is "it's not exactly like XP, so sometimes I can't find things immediately". And that's not really a problem with Vista.)

That said, it is a good idea to put Ren'Py somewhere other than inside Program Files. Try it again somewhere else and see if the problem still occurs.

[AngelicCarrot]

Hmm... It won't let me move Ren'py.

I have my script in a backup notepad file, maybe I should delete and re-install Ren'py in another location? o~o

[Wintermoon]

You don't need to delete Ren'Py yet. Just install it again at a different location. If the new install works, and you've transfered all of your data to the new installation, then you can delete the old install.

[delta]

install

What?

[Wintermoon]

What?

• Unzip Ren'Py to a new location.
• Test the Ren'Py at the new location.
• Copy your data from the old location to the new location.
• Test that the data transferred correctly.
• Delete Ren'Py from the old location. Keep Ren"py at the new location.