Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

I am new to the CCC and have been through training and am now involved in 2 maneuvers. In all battles I have un into the "Error Reading File" problem that happens when my opponent has sent me a file. I have not determined what causes this but I took the following actions to make sure my game engines were OK:

Installed all latest patches.
Re-Installed the Game Engines and the patches

NOW, I believe that the problem might be caused by the zipping of the file using WINzip in a way that causes a file problem. BUT, I am NOT certain.

HAVE YOU RUN INTO THIS ISSUE? HAVE YOU RESOLVED IT?

Here's what I recently recommended to avoid the WINzip (potential) problem:


1.) Locate the game file that you want to send me in your 1812 directory.

2.) Select it with one click.

3.) Use your right hand mouse button to copy the file.

4.) Create a "saved battles" floder on your desktop.

5.) Paste the saved battle into this new folder using the right hand mouse button. (Note: sometimes I need to re-copy the file until the "Paste" command is available to select)

6.) Then, once it's pasted in the new directory, select it with 1 click and then use the right hand mouse button to "Send To" >>>> "Compressed (Zipped) Folder".

7.) Then you can attach the compressed (zipped) folder to an e-mail.


NOTE: If you're using WINzip there is one zip command that is problematic and you might be using it. The above might enable us to move ahead. Sorry if you're already doing this stuff, but I thought it would be good to check with you.

I have played several hundreds of PBEM games with TS BG and HPS games (and some others) with at least a hundred opponents and I can safely say that WinZip is not a major source of problems. Occasionally, you get a bad (corrupted) zip and that problem always is resolved by re-zipping the same file. WinZip is by far the quickest and safest way of sending files; compression is necessary for big battles files with a dial-up connection, and also unzipped battle files are a lot more likely to get corrupted or to end up in the body of the mail rather than as attachment.

File reading errors are usually a result of

- incompatible game versions;
- files placed in the wrong subfolder (BG games);
- missing .map, .oob, or .pdt files;
- (very rarely) corrupted game files;
- unspecific problems solved by deleting the pbemail.xxx and pbemail.yyy files.

I have had this problem on a few different occasions and each time it was because of operator error.

1) I sent a file without closing the turn first.
2) tried to open my own turn which I had already closed and sent
3) playing an additional scenario without downloading all associated files from scenario download center.
4) entered password incorrectly

These are just a few of my screw-ups which caused that same error.

I try to learn each time from my mistakes...

Thanks so much Mike! Those 4 little gotcha's should help people to avoid 'em.

Thanks D.S. Walter for your insight! Your long length of experience is SUPER and we will learn a lot from you.

The problem can usually be resolved as Dierk has said by deleting the
<font color="red"><b>pbemail.xxx and pbemail.yyy files.</font id="red"></b>

The ZIP program should not be a part of the problem.

Let me throw in 2 wampum beads on the zip topic.

I agree, it is not usually a source of any problem, but I did run into a situation with a European player, Italy I think, for which zip files from him would not work. I was also on AoL at the time, so who knows the source of the issue. My zipped files to him worked fine.

We solved the problem by having him send the files unzipped.