I'm running TGWS 1.01.55 on Windows 98 and, on occasion, I'm getting the follwing error;

09/29/2002 05:44:55 PM Game Halted:
Extended Non-player Data File Invalid.

I've had this problem for several months over several versions of TWGS. Occasionally the Gold files will corrrupt in one of the games and it becomes disabled. This has been happening in all of the games that have active Gold Aliens. I've been restoring the files from backup to get the game operational again, but it is a big problem because I usally don't find out about it until a player complains about being unable to get into the game. Because of this problem, if I'm out of town for several days, a game could go down without my knowledge. I wouldn't find out about it until I got back home and read my email.

A couple of questions...

1) What kind of computer is the server running on? Processor speed and disk speed particularly.

2) How many games do you have, how many alien races are running and how many aliens are there overall?

3) Since you're running Windows 98, which has disk utilities included, have you run scandisk lately?

I'll try to help you out as much as possible, but file corruption can be pretty difficult to track down. If all else fails, the next time you find one of the gold files corrupted feel free to email it to me as an attachment to rave@cox.net.

quote:Originally posted by Rave
1) What kind of computer is the server running on? Processor speed and disk speed particularly.

AMD K6-III 450 MHz with 256M of memory. The disk is a Quantum Fireball 4.3 Gig with an ATA33 interface. I have no stability problems and the server runs sometimes for weeks at a time without any problems between reboots. I only reboot it out of routine after shutting down the TWGS for maintenance. Not because I need to. The machine runs nothing other than TWGS on top of Windows 98 SE. It does have Powerchute (for UPS system) and TPF (small firewall) running on it as well.
quote:
2) How many games do you have, how many alien races are running and how many aliens are there overall?

There are 5 games total. 4 of the games have 2 alien races each for a total of 8 NonPserver processes. I have them set to restart on error, but they never get errors and have to restart.
quote:
3) Since you're running Windows 98, which has disk utilities included, have you run scandisk lately?

Actually it's been a few months since I ran Scandisk. Last time I did a full surface scan without any bad sectors. Seems to me it was corrupting those alien files before then as well. This has been going on for quite a while. But I'll run Scandisk with a full surface scan as soon as I can.
quote:
I'll try to help you out as much as possible, but file corruption can be pretty difficult to track down. If all else fails, the next time you find one of the gold files corrupted feel free to email it to me as an attachment to rave@cox.net.

Will do, thanks.