Little problem in the Saved Games Screen (The Witcher 1)

[Nekrypt]

Little problem in the Saved Games Screen (The Witcher 1)

Hello everyone.
First of all, I'm sorry if there's already a thead about this issue, and I didn't see it before posting.

The reason for making this post is that, in TW1, when I save, the saved games shown without the propper mini-screenshot on the left, but with a black rectangle with a grey bar at it's bottom, instead.
I'm using TW1 EE from GOG and with many mods, such as FCR, but I recall that a long time ago I installed a common EE 1.5, without mods, and the same happened.

- My SO is Windows 7 Ultimate (Spanish) and my monitor's resolution is 1366x720
- My PC matches perfectly the requirements of the game (and more).
- I have the game installed in D:/, while my SO is in C:/
- The saves of the game are put in a folder named "saves", wich is in a folder named "The Witcher", that is in "My Documents" folder, wich is in my user folder.
- The only strange thing I see in my PC is that the "The Witcher" folder mentioned above is duplicated in the same folder, and even when both folders have the same name, they coexist. That second folder is empty, and if I delete it, as soon as I open the game, it is made again. Perhaps it has nothing to do with the problem, but just in case.
- If I download a saved game from other PC (I downloaded one from Corylea's page (Thanks!)), that one is shown correctly, with it's mini-screenshot. I took a picture with one of my saves and the downloaded one, so you can stell the difference.
-When trying to make a screenshot from the saved games screen, I realised that every screenshot that I took from the menú or the game, results just black. Because of that, I had to take the picture with a camera.
- There's another "The Witcher" folder in C:/User/AppData/Local/ , and it has two folders within: one named logs, wich has two textfiles, and another named temp, wich has a folder named saves, wich has a folder named screens. In this last folder, there are .tga files (targa), named as the number of the save files that are kept in the folder that's in My Documents. I think those targa files are the screenshots that result completly black.

I think this is a very minor issue, since I haven't got any other problems, but perhaps someone knows how to fix it.
Thanks.

 

[tommy5761]

The mods may be causing some interference but I don`t think so . Try backing up your saves to another hard drive or even to your desktop . Then delete both witcher folders being sure to empty your recycle bin . Then start the game up and at 1st opportunity make a save and exit the game . Check Documents now . Are there 2 witcher folders or only one ? If only 1 then move your saves back in and try the game again .

 

[Nekrypt]

Hello, and thanks for the reply.
I proved erasing those folders, starting a new game, and saving. When returning to the Documents folder, the two "The WItcher" folders were again there, against the Windows law of "no documents with the same name and extension in the same folder". One of those is empty, while the other has the "saves" folder with the saved games.
The saved games remain with a black screenshot, and every screenshot that I take manually, just appear like a black picture when I paste them in Paint.

 

[tommy5761]

Sounds like an OS issue . May be time to run a disc check to ensure there aren`t any problems with the hard drive .

 

[Nekrypt]

I ran a chkdsk not long ago, and do ir with some regularity, but always experienced this problem, since I started playing The Witcher, some years ago, even when I had another graphics card, and before I formated my PC. I always had this issue, but never payied atention to it.

I think that this isn't related to the saves, but to the screenshots, as any picture that I take with the [Impr. Pant.] just results in a black image.

 

[tommy5761]

If you right click on both folders and in the general tab do both folders specify the same location and are both folders set to read-only

 

[Nekrypt]

I'm sorry but, was that a question? If that's the case:
The folder that contains the "saves" folder with the actual saved games, says to be in D:/Users/"My User"/Documents/, but the one that's empty says to be located in D:/Users/Public/Documents/, and it's not a direct access, but a real folder.
Both "The Witcher" folders are marked as read-only (not with a tick, but with a blue square in the verification box).

 

[tommy5761]

Have you moved the Documents folder to the "D" drive from "C" ?
The other witcher folder (one without saves) generally belongs in C:\Users\Public\Public Documents and that`s where the extra adventures belong .

 

[Nekrypt]

Hello again.
Well, my User folder, and all the user folders that exist now or are created, are stored in "D:" . I did a change in the registry when last formating my PC, so that all my folders and most of the temporary files are put in "D:" , because I bought an SSD ("C:") to install the OS.
I'm almost sure that this is not the cause of the black screenshots, because it also happened when I only had a normal hard drive and my User folder was stored in "C:", but now that I look in the game, the extra adventures don't appear in the new game options, so now I have two problems
I haven't playextra adventures yet; that's why I didn't noticed this problem.

 

[tommy5761]

What size SSD ? Lifehacker has an article on moving Users folder but not without repercussions .
http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7

 

[Nekrypt]

My SSD has 120 GB of space.

What I did to relocate the user folders was:
- Create a temporary user when installing Windows 7.
- Enter with the Admin account
- Erase the temporary user.
- Copy the "Default" and "Public" folders to a new location in "D:"
- Change some part in the registry that says where are located those two folders (specifying that they are in the new location)
- Create a new user account (a permanent one now)

The new account is stored in "D:" now.