Here's a question for my fellow lagoon inhabitants.....

I have a game (Bonetown) currently installed on my external (G) drive. For some reason, I am unable to install an expansion patch. So, I tried to uninstall it to get it off my G drive so I could install it on my C drive (thinking I would be able to install the patch then). When I tried to uninstall, I received an error message that said "The folder path 'Program Files' contains an invalid character." And was unable to continue.

I can still play the game from the G drive, but can't uninstall or expand.

Anyone have any suggestions? Or, better yet, fixes?

Not sure on this one...


If you can't do a uninstall you may end up having to move any files you want to keep from the G drive & then format the drive.

David wrote :
Not sure on this one...
If you can't do a uninstall you may end up having to move any files you want to keep from the G drive & then format the drive.

I'd much rather reformat an auxilary drive than my primary. I'd temporarily move files I wish to keep to my C drive, reformat the aux drive then try reinstalling the game on the aux. If your C drive experiences the same problem what do you do?
L

@Dave that's not correct. The problem would persist in the registry.

You would need to use the registry editor to make windows think it's uninstalled.

Press the windowskey+R, type regedit, enter.

You will find reference of the program under the following keys: (the keys are the ones with the folder symbol on the left)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWARE
Go to the key, find the key of Bonetown (it's either under Bonetown or under the name of the publisher)
When you've found the reference, save the key (for security) and then remove it.
Check if it's not visible on the installed software list anymore. If it still is you might need to reboot, I'm not sure. This should do the trick.
If anything goes wrong, import the keys and it will be again as it is now.

If you can't install the game afterwards, there might be more keys in the registry which you need to remove. Use the search option and search for Bonetown and/or the publisher and follow the procedure described above.


Alternatively you could check the key, change the path of the game and copy the files to your c drive. By the way if the path contains a space, it need to be quoted, otherwise it contains an illegal character.

For security reasons, and especially for games on Microsoft operating systems, to my opinion the best way is to use virtualization.

That is: install Linux as a primary system on your machine (PC or laptop) and use virtual machines for the different Microsoft operating systems. This way
[*]You can use Windows as usual
[*]System backup means just to copy one single (big) file and you have saved the whole Windows installation
[*]If one of the Microsoft systems is infected or crashes, just copy the last backup (1 file only) and continue working
I understand that Linux and virtualization is not really user-friendly for the novice user to install, but you might know somebody who has experience with it and could help you. This solution will save you a lot of headache.

Best regards,
qbv8

Linux is not suitable for playing games, especially not in a virtualised environment. The main problem is the current state of the video drivers under linux. The second problem is getting directx to run under a virtualised environment.

LRM wrote :
I'd much rather reformat an auxilary drive than my primary. I'd temporarily move files I wish to keep to my C drive, reformat the aux drive then try reinstalling the game on the aux. If your C drive experiences the same problem what do you do?
L

That's what I meant, I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the C drive be formatted.

David wrote :
That's what I meant, I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the C drive be formatted.

I meant what you knew David. I'm just suggesting he not install a program with a known problem on his hard drive, where removal becomes immense.
L

As far as I know, I'm the only one who's had problems with this that owns the game. It's a game called Bonetown. I'm not getting much technical help from them, though.

I appreciate the responses. Would formatting the external drive, then running crap cleaner get rid of the registry entries?

I don't know if it will remove all the entries, but probably most of them. I'd still advise you to open regedit yourself. It won't bite . Seriously if you just make backups and follow my instructions you won't break anything. It will take a lot less time and it's less risky.

I still suspect it says somewhere G:Program Files instead of "G:Program Files". The first entry contains an illegal character, namely a space. The second is quoted so it's ok. Looking for it definitely won't hurt.

By the way. what's the game like?

I like the game. It has limitations but I think it's fun.

So, in the registry, if I search the registry for G: /ProgramFiles and I put quotation marks around it, it should work?

Hi roberttx
Fumbling in the registry is a risky thing to do, as you can destroy a lot if not done right. In this case I suggest:
[*]1. Pay very much attention to spell everything correctly. Spaces are significant as is the backslash (not a slash like /).
[*]2. Open your registry editor, and mark on the left side the top most node (Probably it says 'My Computer').
[*]3. Search for the next occurrence of the pattern G:Program Files
[*]4. Somewhere (possibly in the status line at the bottom of the registry editor) you see the path of this occurrence. It can look like My ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE..... Write this into a file, and add to it what you see on the right side, e.g. the Name, the type and the data, for example Name=ATICCC, Type=REG_SZ, Data="G:Program Filesfooar" -exec blah. Now go to Step 3. above and repeat this procedure until you have searched the whole registry.
[*]5. Reply to this thread and paste into your post every occurrence of this string that you have encountered.
Then I suggest that some knowledgeable person here in the lagoon can tell you exactly which occurrence you should change in what way.

It is very likely that the string that you search can be found in different contexts, and it is important to change the correct entry, otherwise either nothing happens, or you might have destroyed the installation of something else.

Hope this helps for the beginning. As long as you do not alter the content of the registry, but just search for patterns, nothing can be destroyed, so this procedure is without any danger of damaging something.

Good luck, and see you later here.

Alternatively, you could open regedit. Go to file, export, export all. save as w9x/NT4 or as text. Upload it to rapidshare and pm me a link.

I'll just create a file with the fix and send it back. I never really thought of the registry as dangerous. You need to pay attention to what you're doing though. It's not that hard in my opinion. Maybe that's just me.

It's quite a job to search for all the ocuring strings and export them. I know, since I've done it often. I hate reinstalling and I've never encountered a problem I couldn't fix, except for the one time someone turned off my computer with 98SE on it, while it was writing to disk and my whole file system was messed up.

For a good and total uninstallation, i suggest using CCleaner (freeware) that will clean all the unused registry. First, uninstall the game, second, launch CCleaner, third, re-install the game.

" FORMAT C:/ " is also an excellent method.