Welcome to the HeavyMetalPro Forums

Just a really quick note to let all of you know that yes, all of the HeavyMetal programs do in fact run, and run well, on Vista. But Bill Gates has a few hoops he would like you to jump through first!

Seriously, Vista is changing all the rules, especially the rules that programmers use in determining how to install and run programs, and especially where to save data files and other information while the programs are running. I'm just learning about all this myself, having just picked up my new Vista machine on Saturday. Just tonight I installed HMPlus and HMMap, and ran into the same type of problems many of you have already. So I've compiled the steps that you can take to successfully install and run HM programs on your Vista machines.

The "Running HeavyMetal on Vista" web page can be found at:

http://www.heavymetalpro.com/vista.htm

It's definitely a work in progress, as I will no doubt learn better methods, plus I intend to modify the programs to install and work more seamlessly with Vista. But in the meantime, I wanted to at least give you some instructions on how to run your programs on your new machine or hard drive. And I've also included a bit of background about why all this is necessary.

As mentioned on the web page, if you have any questions or comments concerning the instructions, find something that doesn't work as stated, or find a better or easier way to do any of this, please let me know. I'm learning right along with you!

The above was also sent out to those who have subscribed to the HeavyMetalPro Newsletter. If you're not already signed-up, take a look at it at:

http://www.heavymetalpro.com/Newsletter.htm

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Rick
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[email]rick@heavymetalpro.com[/email] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/flag-us.gif[/img] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/ ... rolina.gif[/img]

* There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't. *

Yeah.

(Hey: Someone has to support y'all poor Vista users . . . )

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[url=http://www.hitbox.tv/hmpgoose]Goose - The Egyptian God of Frustration[/url]

"He closes his eyes and remembers the night splattered with brightness, the sudden flare of erupting fuel, the mad chase as, supersonic, he bobbed and weaved among the hills and valleys of the Ozarks, the laws on his tail, burning for home …"

cool....thanks for the update. Looking forward to hearing more.

HK

yeah i known for some time that all teh Heavy Metal programs run on Vista. only thing different is when placing weapons and equipmnt in pro. where before you drag a solid blok now its a flashing one thats a little annoying but no big deal.

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Another Fine Product from Mad Engineers Inc.

Mad Engineers Inc. -
- Helping you pound your enemies back to the stone age ever since the Bronze Age

Also, when uninstalling remember that everything goes. I lost my custom and modified HMP files again...

EDIT:
Okay, oddness.

I turned off the admin stuff and the files are back. I turn on admin access and they're not there.

Ah, the joys of Vista virtualization. Now they're there, now they aren't.

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Rick
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[email]rick@heavymetalpro.com[/email] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/flag-us.gif[/img] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/ ... rolina.gif[/img]

* There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't. *

That does it. I'm naming my hard drive "Schroedinger"

Just installed HMPlus (thanks Rick!) on the new PC, and it seems to be going okay. I really want to try and design some Lite stuff. Hehe.

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What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
Make me one with everything.

do you refer to schRoedinger ? like in schroedingers cat?

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typos and spelling-mistakes are property of the finder. english is not my mother-tongue.

I finally came across my disks and installed on my Vista machine. I followed Rick's instructions, and I wanted to say the install worked perfect across all the programs. Thanks so much Rick!

This is YEARS late, but I had no problems with Win7 running HM, Vee, Lite, BA, Aero on two different OS versions on two different machines.

As it happens I just had occasion to reinstall all my Heavymetal stuff. When I did it warned me it would not work since my OS wasn't one of a list of pre-windows 7 ones. But once I ignored that the installation proceeded just fine.

The only problem I had was copying over my custom stuff. For some reason 3 dropship designs have apparently disappeared off the old hard drive somehow. The rest was all there though. *shrugs* It could have worse, could have lost the lot with the only backup copy being a few years old which would have meant almost my custom stuff for aerospace would have gone poof.

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Lyran-ism: You have two cows. One starts a business and becomes insanely rich. The other buys rank in your military and subsequently loses three assault regiments and two worlds to a band of pirates in Locusts.

Make sure, when you run the HM programs as well as when you're copying/moving files, that you are logged in as an Administrator. The HM programs all save, by default, to your \Program Files (x86)\ directory, and Windows Vista and higher do not like that. I, on the other hand, don't like that it wants you to put all your files in your profile's folder. Anyhow, if you're not logged in, or running the program, as an Admin, Windows actually places new and modified files in a secret, almost-impossible-to-find, directory. It will look like it's there some times, but actually it's somewhere else. Running as Admin allows you to actually use the directory specified, resulting in much more reliable, and logical, operation.

Hope this helps.

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Rick
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[email]rick@heavymetalpro.com[/email] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/flag-us.gif[/img] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/ ... rolina.gif[/img]

* There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't. *

I found them, along with the other ship files I realized were not there. That is just annoying how Windows stored that. What idiot thought we wanted our saved stuff to be hidden somewhere we didn't know about instead of where we thought we were putting it? No doubt the fool is a key member of Obama's healthcare website programming team.

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Lyran-ism: You have two cows. One starts a business and becomes insanely rich. The other buys rank in your military and subsequently loses three assault regiments and two worlds to a band of pirates in Locusts.

If you're looking for an argument, you won't find one here.

Basically, Microsoft feels you don't have the knowledge to save anything to their "protected" Program Files folders, so when you try, they put the files some else ("safe"), but let you think you are saving them where you want them. To me, either let me (preferred) or don't (not preferred), but don't let me think one thing, and do another.

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Rick
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[email]rick@heavymetalpro.com[/email] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/flag-us.gif[/img] [img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/ ... rolina.gif[/img]

* There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't. *