Looks like the SWATH forum is swamped with spammers so I will post it here.

I have Windows Vista Home Premium with Avast Internet Security. It reported SWATH as a potentially dangerous program and sand-boxed it. Now after every session I lose my save files and the SWATH registration code won't take (I bought it in 2005, does it expire?) after a restart. It takes when I click unlock and tells me to restart the program, and after restarting it is unregistered again. Is the Sandbox doing this, and how do I stop it so it works? I will one day upgrade to Windows 7, but not yet. Is it a Vista problem as well because ATTAC crashes in Vista when I am port trading with the script.

No Swath does not expire that I know of. I would dump AVAST and load MS Security Essentials (free), much less overhead and same protection. If you are content with AVAST add an exception to let is be considered safe.

I was talking with Stein in email about it after posting it here. I finally figured it out by myself though:

It turns out the Script options for the Java VM, ZOC and TWX location of scripts kept going empty after restarting SWATH. Any game file I saved went missing and it freaked me out.

I had to restart Vista and click an option on the SWATH desktop icon to right click and then choose "Always run outside of Sandbox" and now the Java and Script settings stick. I am out of activations for today and will try the reg code later.

Sorry about that, even setting the Avast not to run it in the Sandbox was not enough, it put a tick on the desktop icon I was clicking and I just found it out. One for you to know about if someone is running Avast Internet Security as it is really paranoid. Also have them try Silent/Gaming Mode from the Avast system tray icon while playing.

What made me guess it was that it kept saying I had 30 days left to activate it and it had been a few days after I installed it. Sorry for the confusion, but this is one for the record books.

Yeah, I run Vista and Avast and I haven't had any problems with Swath (which I use for testing TWGS). The key is knowing when you can trust an app and override the Avast warnings. Unfortunately, these days Windows is so paranoid that it tries to protect you from doing anything. I think Windows 7 is worse than Vista in this regard.

Taking SWATH out of the sandbox worked, it gets registered. Only the registration program Swath has needs to be taken out of the sandbox as well.
Yes that was it, turn off the sandbox tick on the main icon. Then when it ran the registration tool it wanted to sandbox that as well, so I said run as normal and remember the setting for that program and it registered, I restarted it, and now it says it is registered to me.

Actually I have found that Windows 7 is less paranoid than Vista, also runs much faster as well. Well it still has the nag setting of asking if you want to permit the program to run, but that setting is easier to adjust than in Vista, and once you set it to not nag you anymore Windows 7 works fine, and I use Microsoft Security Essentials now as well, Works as good as Avira A/V which both are better than Avast, Avast's overhead slowed down computer functions when I had Vista, when I went to avira, that went away, then I got the Microsoft Security Essentials, which was written originally by the people who were involved with Avira and on the Windows Defender before Microsoft took it over.

I now run Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. And am quite happy with it. Especially when I can run virtual XP Pro within it as a virtual machine. That alone gives me greater flexability.

Vulcan