Plugins, Brown Boxes and vanishing BATs

[David49 0]

Hi.

 

I have installed numerous plugins recently, many from this site.  Nearly all BATs.  Yes, I have unzipped them all, and they were all functioning fine until today when I downloaded some more.  Since then when I logged in, all of my previous BATs have turned to brown boxes, the previous items have vanished from my menus and when I look in the plugins folder, there are only a couple of items compared to probably over 100 and other items which were in the plugins folder have now been sent into different folders.  I don't know what to do, as I don't know which plugin was responsible for the problem, but it's really frustrating as it has messed up several cities and is obviously hours of time downloading at the BATs and it appears they have vanished. Really need help here. PS I am not a super-whizz kid.  My technical knowledge is limited.

[Prophet42 1,503]

Did you backup your plugin folder before this happened or did you save the downloaded zip files?  Check your download folder and if the zip files are still there you can reinstall them.  Another possibility is you can try use a restore point for a time before the problem appeared.  Other than that, there is probably no way to restore it.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I have absolutely no idea how a plugin would cause files to disappear magically or appear in different folders. Besides, without knowing what you downloaded and added before the problem happened, I'm afraid it will be next to impossible to help determine the cause of the problem.

 

Have you, by any chance, tried the DATpacker tool?

 

And what do you mean by "when I logged in"? When you started the game? Just wondering because there is no login that I know of (unless maybe you're using the Steam version, which I'm not familiar with), so I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to.

 

It would also help to know what folder(s) got moved to what destination(s) - a few examples should suffice.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I hope you are well-enough organized to be able to remove your latest additions to an other location on your machine.  A folder on your desktop will do.  Try backing them out and see if you get the situation you previously had.  You should be able to find them all by file creation dates if nothing else.

 

A word of caution.  Do you have good anti-virus and a firewall active?  While many of us download only from known moderated and trusted sites, there seem to be some new sites springing up that are not trustworthy.

[rsc204 21,864]

System restore is not going to help you, it does not deal with user files, only the system and programs themselves.

 

There is no explanation for files moving themselves/being deleted that could conceivably be the result of a mod/plugin for SC4.

 

Something else has happened here, either something has been run (with or without your assistance) that has caused this, or possibly someone with access to your machine? It's also possible that a malicious file did this, but that's very unlikely.

 

I'd open My Computer, do a search for *.DAT on the entire machine, see how many come up that are not in your plugins folder. If they have been moved about, they should still be there somewhere. If they've been deleted, you might find them in the Recycle Bin. If they are not there or in the recycle bin, without a backup you are going to have to start over. However if you do find them scattered, do a couple more searches for *.SC4Lot, *.SC4Model and *.SC4Desc. There four file types are most common, if you find where all those are, you should be able to track everything down with some effort.