Okay, so I started using I7 last September, but lately I haven’t had time to actually work on a project as of late. So while I’ve been reading the Documentation in the IDE, the forum, and other reference materials, it’s been about two months since I compiled something. Today, I went to write something, and the go button does not work. It depresses, but does nothing else. I have uninstalled and reinstalled I7, but I still have the same problem.
I don’t really know if this is the right place to post this, but I’m hoping someone here might have some suggestions or a possible fix. I really thought the reinstall would fix it. Aside from that… I just don’t know. I’m using the Windows IDE on Windows 7 with the latest version of Inform.
Possibly a stupid question, but anyway … You do see both ”pages” in the IDE window, do you? I mean, you haven’t resized the left hand ”page” (that usually contains the source text) to the extent that the right hand one (where you usually playtest the game) is just hidden?
Sorry, but I don’t know how to make a video of it. None of the commands do anything. F5, through the menu, and the button. After trying to click them, I tab through game, index, etc, and it’s as though I never clicked GO or attempted to build through any other means. I do see both pages. I had resized the right window to cover the whole screen while reading documentation, but I have since sized it back. This happens with both old and new projects.
Well, oddly enough, I have been able to install the IDE on another user account on my computer and it works fine. Another thing I noticed was that with every uninstall/reinstall, some settings remained unchanged; for instance, I had changed the font size and this change survived after uninstall/reinstall… On the other user account, everything was default when I installed it. So now I’m wondering if my uninstall (which I’m doing through control panel) doesn’t really uninstall completely. Obviously however, it isn’t a problem with the IDE, itself (I hadn’t really thought it was). Any further help or suggestions is appreciated because I’d rather not have to switch users every time. But I will if I must.
I’ve definitely not had any reports of anything like this before. After attempting to compile, is there any text on the Errors tab, Progress sub-tab, or is it completely blank?
Settings are stored in the registry, and not deleted on uninstall. You can remove them manually by starting the Windows utility “regedit” and deleting all the keys under the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\David Kinder\Inform” node, but I can’t see how any of the settings could cause your problem. (Also, be careful using regedit - it’s a powerful but dangerous tool with no undo.)
DavidK: After attempting to compile, there is no text whatsoever on the errors tab, or progress subtab. Thank you for the information about the registry editor. I deleted the keys after my latest uninstall. Though, as you thought, it made no difference concerning my problem.
Another thing to note that I just found out: After opening an already existing project and attempting to compile. I have exactly the same issues. However, if I close the window and then attempt to open the same project again, I am confronted with:
So it would seem that this is actually corrupting or deleting my old story files.
Hmmm … after looking at the code, I am struck that the only way I can see that what you describe on trying to compile happens, would be if the front-end failed to save the project (which is the first thing that is done before compiling).
The save is implemented to try to prevent any error on saving killing the project: the source will be saved out to a file “story.ni.save”, then “story.ni” is deleted and “story.ni.save” moved to “story.ni”. Possibly this process is failing somehow, though it’s not obvious why.
Would you look in the directory of the project that now fails to load? Is there anything in the project’s “Source” sub-directory? If so, what’s there?
@Ariiell, could you describe your user account setup a little? You said it worked on one account but not another. Is there any difference in these accounts? Are you saving to the same relative location/folder with both accounts?
Okay, that’s interesting - it does strongly suggest that something about saving is the root cause of your problem. Try renaming this file to “story.ni”, then start Inform 7 and load this project up. Does the source code appear correctly? If you try running the game, does anything happen now? If not, what is left in the “Source” sub-directory afterwards?
George: The account that the IDE doesn’t work on is my primary user account. It is the one I use for everything. The one that it did work on was a relatively new account that was used by a house guest I had for a short while. I installed the IDE with the default folders on both accounts so everything in that respect should be relatively the same. As I have used my primary user account for years, and the other one is hardly used, I can’t easily say all the ways in which they are different.
Erik: Permissions issue… That made me remember something that I should have remembered before now. About a month ago, I had an issue with creating a new user account (the house guest account I refer to above). It would create the account but throw an error when trying to log on to it. Under the advice of a very computer savvy friend that has so far never led me astray, I went to the security tab of the properties window for my c:\ drive and clicked advanced, and then clicked change permissions, then checked “replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object” and clicked okay to allow it to do so. It fixed the problem I was having so I didn’t really give it a second though until now. Sounds very much like something that could be causing this issue. Though, to be honest, I don’t know enough about this to be certain, or to fix it. Now I feel dumb for doing something I did not fully understand.
DavidK: Renaming the story.ni.save file to story.ni allows me to open the project in the IDE like normal, no errors in bringing up the source code. Then attempting to compile, once again, does nothing and afterwards the only file in the Source Subfolder is a story.ni.save file again. I’m very happy though, that this seems to mean I didn’t actually lose any of my work.
EDIT
I forgot to mention that the two user accounts referred to above are standard not admin. I have a separate admin account, hardly used.
EDIT #2
If I right click and run Inform as an administrator, everything seems to work correctly. I believe this supports the idea of a permissions issue… Still unsure of exactly how to fix it, though.
Okay, so it’s definitely saving that’s failing in some odd way. I think to get any further I need to build a version of the front-end that checks for any errors during saving and prints out any Windows error codes as it goes along. If you’re up for trying this, send me an email at “davidk davidkinder [dot] co (dot) uk” and we’ll take it from there.
That shouldn’t matter - I always use a non-admin account for everything other than installing software, and it seems fine here.
Yes, permissions definitely seem to be the problem here. Since as David mentioned story.ni.save is just a renamed story.ni, it seems that this account lacks write permissions (to create the new story.ni).
If you right-click the Inform folder and open Properties, what does the Security tab show?
Sorry to all for the delayed response; I’ve been quite ill for the past few days.
ChrisC: In the security tab of the the properties window of the Inform folder, I have four different “group or usernames” with different permissions. The details are as follows:
Authenticated Users has checkmarks under “Allow” for Modify, Read & execute, List folder contents, Read, Write but not Full control, Special permissions. There are no checkmarks under “Deny”. SYSTEM has checkmarks under “Allow” for Full Control, Modify, Read & execute, List folder contents, Read, Write but not Special permissions. There are no checkmarks under “Deny”. Administrators has checkmarks under “Allow” for Full Control, Modify, Read & execute, List folder contents, Read, Write but not Special permissions. There are no checkmarks under “Deny”. Users has checkmarks under “Allow” for Read & execute, List folder contents, Read but not Full Control, Modify, Write, Special permissions. There are no checkmarks under “Deny”.
Also, I wanted to thank you all for your help thus far. I really appreciate all the responses!
