OFF Man Fatal Error

[Rickitycrate]

It has finally happened that my OFF install has gone bad. After countless flights and hours. I finished a DiD campaign flight and pressed escape to end. The screen went black and never came back. Alt/tab/Delete and I could not close any applications. I restarted the pc and tried to start OFF and got the following messag

 

OFFMAN: Fatal errorsetting up system paths. OFF will nowexit.....

 

OFFMAN: A fatal nonrecoverableerror has occured starting up OFF-it is recommended to un-install and re-install OFF.

 

Question. Do I have to un-install/re-install? Sounds like it.

 

Can I copy my DiD Pilot Dossier and then put it in my new install?

[+RAF_Louvert]

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RC, you will likely have to re-install CFS3 and OFF but before you do, make a copy of your entire "pilots" folder so you will have all the related files you need for your existing campaigns. You could try going back one day and restoring your system as well and see if that gets OFF back and running, but I kind of doubt it will. Good luck Sir.

 

Lou

 

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[Ras]

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RC, you will likely have to re-install CFS3 and OFF but before you do, make a copy of your entire "pilots" folder so you will have all the related files you need for your existing campaigns. You could try going back one day and restoring your system as well and see if that gets OFF back and running, but I kind of doubt it will. Good luck Sir.

 

Lou

 

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Good luck, RC. I don't know much at all about this sort but sounds like what Lou is saying makes sense. Hopefully you can keep your pilot..

[Rickitycrate]

I will try Uncleal but later today.

[Rickitycrate]

If I must re-install OFF. I wonder if I need to re-install CFS3 also. I am thinking of doing both re-installs. I have the CFS3 3.1 disk now and my original OFF install was over P2. I would follow the instructions with the OFF disc and not install CFS3 first but only insert the disks when prompted by the OFF install. No need to have files that aren't used. I may end up with a cleaner install that might give a slight improvement in performance.

 

So far I have sent my DiD Pilot folders to my Documents to copy over to the new install. I will lose a lot of skins but most are available for D/L.

[sitting_duck]

not saying that this will work, but deleting the uisel.xml file has solved some problems with that can occur with off.

 

it gets rebuilt when you start the game.

 

its in the documents and settings/xxxxxx/application data (appdata in vista)\microsoft\cfsww1 over flanders field where xxxxx can either be administrator, or your user name

 

but as this seems to be a path problem, i would dbl check to see that everything required of off is still in the correct place.

[Rickitycrate]

Thanks in large part to your advice and encouragement I am back in business and salvaged my DiD pilot in the process. I un-installed both OFF and CFS3. In the process I deleted some nonrelated programs and files as a matter of house keeping. I re-installed by the OFF DVD instruction. My first install was a complete CFS3 with P2 and then P3 over that.

I recently got the newer 1.31 vers. of CFS3 when the OFF DVD called for the CFS3 #1 disk it hardly wrote any files from it. Finished the DVD install process and the Super and Mini patched. Test flights along each step. Everything checked out. Made some adjustments in Graphics card and reset my Did Overrides and Workshp settings. Created a German pilot and then closed the OFF prog. I opened the OFF files, went to Pilots and deleted the Pilot 2 dossier and log files and then dragged and dropped the Pilot 2 files I had saved to MY Docs from my DiD campaign. Everything was there and working. I resumed my campaign. Only to be shot down and taken prisoner for the duration. It was a bombing mission and during final approach we were jumped by E/A. The engine of my DFW took a few hits and conked out. I brought her down under controll with no chance to cross back over the front. Here is the report so Uncleal can see and believe.

[Rickitycrate]

Yep, that would work but it wouldn't be DiD so not this time. I am enjoying DiD. Facing virtual death or capture is much of the emotional/caring investment we put into our characters. And then there is the matter of honor. I don't concern myself with impressing anyone as I am aware of my faults and I try to be humble. By now everyone here has my number... haha.

 

Uncleal, I was thinking about OFF/CFS3 QC and Vista compatability. I had stated that I had no trouble with OFF/CFS3 QC running Vista and maybe that's because with my first OFF install I had a complete install of CFS3 also. Now with my new install I really would not expect CFS3 QC to work. So very little of CFS3 was taken from the disk. Just a thought.