Well, I did something. And I don’t know what I did. Well, I know what I did, but I don’t know what IT did. And I didn’t lose my whole system. But it isn’t looking good.
Long story short of what I did. I had downloaded the US Orthophotos premade scenery for California. That is a torrent (44GB). When you unpack it, you are left with a huge folder of JPGs that must be converted to DDS files. There is a separate little batch utility to do that: Very Fast DDS Conversion solution - Utilities - X-Plane.Org Forum
Well, I followed the instructions (I thought) and there was a point that mentioned “clean up files” and I hit yes thinking it’d just delete the JPGs. Now nothing that requires a .DLL file will launch on my computer (that means basically everything). I can’t even.
Is your root drive (like C:) with the windows install full? When you unpack stuff using things like WinZip it will use the %temp% folder. Even though you are unpacking from D: to E: (for example) then C: can still fill up.
If it’s that then let us know and we can find/clear it up, and then change winzip to use a different temp location.
It might perhaps not be as dire as I thought. I think it deleted C++ Redistributable DLLs (which I’ve been able to reinstall), so I’m able to launch DCS World…so it looks like stuff is still there. I think it will be a case by case situation on things that won’t run.
For instance - if I try to launch P3D v4, I get a d3dx11_43.dll was not found and a D3DCOMPILER_43.dll was not found. I’m assuming those are DirectX installs?
Which bat file did you run originally for FastDDS? The Convert_General or the HPC_Convert?
It looks like both do this
set /P j=Is Conversion DONE? should i delete unwanted files[Y/N]?
if /I "%j%" EQU "Y" goto :delete
if /I "%j%" EQU "N" goto :close
goto :choice
:delete
echo "Deleting.."
del *.jpg
del *.exe
del *.dll
del *.txt
del c*.bat
del n*.bat
pause
exit
…which is meant to be run in the directory where the conversions are taking place, i.e. \Games\zzz_hd_global_scenery3\Earth nav data or something.
I thought I moved all those files into the texture directory, but I DID accidentally NOT run HPC Convert ASAP as the first thing (which I should have known to do…because I did it 10 other times with other ortho directories a few months ago). I think I ran texconv.exe maybe? But then I went and did HPC Convert ASAP and it appeared to run correctly anyway…(at least, it did the job). I did not run it as Admin and I did run it from the texture directory…
That’s odd, as it looks like the script at least doesn’t climb up to other directories etc. You sure that this is definitely directly related to the script, as in, you run the apps fine before the conversion and then it broke? (Just narrowing down if it was something else, i.e. did Windows update or something cause this, unlikely but you never know). It looks like something unregistered the DLLs from DirectX from your system, not just deleted them.
So the only thing I figure I possibly could have done was perhaps run one of those batch files from within the zip file (without actually unzipping it) perhaps? I had multiple Explorer windows open at the time…so it was certainly possible. But even then, it would have run in (I assume) C:\users\Chris\downloads (my default download dir). Scratching my head over this one…
So X-Plane is working. I did notice that FlyWithLua “stopped” message though…so I’m wondering if that runs off a DLL that got deleted too. I’ll have to do more research…but first I gotta take my Christmas lights down before my wife gets home…LOL…or I’ll get deleted.
Would running that script in ADMIN mode have caused a problem? The reason I ask, I’m re-downloading the ortho file because X-Plane is telling me I have an error in that scenery area. When I click on that HPC_Convert as Run as Admin, it shows NO files ready to covert (well, actually, one file I think). I wonder if running it in ADMIN causes it to run at another location? And then I agreed to the clean-up and it wiped whatever directory that was? When I just click on it and launch it in NON-admin mode, it saw the PNG files just fine.
Run as Admin just allows any child processes (as in the things the script calls) to run as Admin as well. That Admin thing just gives the running code a ‘token’ that can bypass something called ‘UAC’. User Account Control is a layer over Windows protected settings and files. So put another way, the file locations like ‘Program Files (x86)’ or ‘Program Files’ directories (or under them) need a special permission that either comes from that UAC pop-up asking yes/no manually or though a process that is Run as Admin (or has the admin token already).
As lots of games get installed under ‘Program Files’ and that’s a Windows UAC protected resource, then people get used to using ‘Run As Admin’ to get around that. If you have X-Plane installed in D:/games or if your scenery is in another place not under a UAC protected resource then you don’t need to Run As Admin.
