Help with PM2IM utility

howard334

New member
Can anyone help me with the PM2IM utility by PEV? I've emailed the author but received no response. I'm running 2006 and it sez that .pm are not in use anymore, use .im - so I run PM2IM, file,open, file of *.pm and then the window sez "opening blah-blah file. Press 'Convert to .im' button", in which I do, but then the program sits there indefinitely doing absolutely nothing. I can "stop" it with the stop button, press "Resume" or close the program with the exit menu drop down, but no conversion ever takes place. Can anyone enlighten me as to what I am doing wrong? It's 06 on XP pro.

TIA
 
Anyone?:o

Plz don't get upset now because I bumped this - I promise not to do it again....:wave:

TIA

I suspect you haven't set it up as it says in the instructions all I do is double click on the pm file, or use the open with option, I don't start the PM2IM program and browse for the file.
And you have put the Trainz mesh importer in the same folder? otherwise it won't do anything, If you haven't got it, Its included with the latest version.

The Author does have some threads on here about his tools by the way and is probably more likely to reply / read on there, search for user PEV
 
It should put a message in the text area, something like this:
Created mesh.im.
That means you're done and can close the program. (There's no progress bars or anything 'cause it shouldn't take long to do.)

On occasion there may be a lot more text put into that area, but that's the exception rather then the rule and most likely to occur when dealing with foreign items. (Items that used foreign characters in texture file names that Trainz doesn't like. PM2IM will rename those textures and you have to rename the .texture.txt files to match.)
 
Howard,
My apologies for the delayed reply..

The only thing I can think of that can cause your problem is the MicroSoft C++ runtime file for TrainzMeshImporter. Search the TrainzDev site for details on how to get the latest version of this. (Sorry I don't remember where I saw this info)

My program is relatively robust if the mesh file is loaded from the file open dialog or from windows explorer by double clicking. But it does rely on a successful launch of the TMI.

Alternatively if the asset you are trying to open has a faulty mesh (and one or two do) the program will fail, but it should notify an error.
 
I appreciate everyone's response - thank you-

PEV, I have run TrainzMeshImporter by it self and it comes back with an error that "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem." to which I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling a few times but it reports the same each time - any other ideas? (Where can I find this "Microsoft C++" runtime or rather where is it in my pc - %root% dir?)

Thanx for the help.:o
 

Edrick,
Thanks for this. I mislaid the info on where to get it.

Howard,
If you run the TMI in a DOS window with no arguments it should display the program help. That proves it's working..

You need to create a DOS window with a batch file..

In Win XP (not sure about Vista or WIN7) you can create a file named "DOSWin.bat" with the following lines in it:

@echo off
cmd.exe /k

Then you can execute the TMI in that window..
 
Thanx again Peter - I downloaded the runtime from M$ and installed, but no luck - then I tried the DOS box but it reports that it is unable to execute the program, even when I rename it to TMI.exe (for dos as it seems to like 8.3 filenames) this is without even trying PM2IM but I did try PM2IM before renaming back and it did report that it could not find TrainzMeshImporter.exe (because I renamed it temporarily) - any other ideas? Just FYI - I don't have any firewall or antivirus program running (at this time:))
TIA
 
A most unusual problem.. If TMI won't run my program obviously cannot finish its task, because it looks for the presence of a temporary file generated by the TMI.

TMI is an Auran program, maybe you can flag the problem with the help desk.

Other than that I'm sorry I can't think of any thing other than an anitvirus program that would cause your problem.
 
Well, I'm trying to think (but nothing happens:D) but I realized that I have "Windows XP Media Center Edition" running on this particular PC - all my others are running XP Pro SP3 - I will try this on one of my other PCs and see if the problem exists - I'm told that Media Edition is an bastard from XP Home with some missing functions/services - I will investigate further and let you know (or if anyone else is running MCE perhaps you could shed light on this issue....)
If that doesn't work, I'll poke the helpdesk in the side for effectz:hehe:.
TIA
 
Aha, I think the file I linked to is the wrong version. I downloaded the mesh importer file off the TrainzDev Wiki and checked the readme and it's got a link for the SP1 version of the runtime:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...D9-AE1A-4A14-984D-389C36F85647&displaylang=en

Edit: My original info (since I couldn't find anything on the wiki's web page) was by using a program to watch what files the program accessed when run and then try to find the runtime package based on that. I then checked the files properties to get an idea what runtime package they were from. That info didn't mention SP1.
 
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Howard,

Yes, Edrick is correct. This is the download for the package. I have that download file on my system and I remember installing it, though TMI has always worked for me (even before I installed the "newer" runtime). I guess the runtime dll came with some other program I installed.

Thanks again Edrick..
 
"And the wiener is...." Thanx for the help - I did use that latest M$ link from EdrickV and as it appeared to be the same version as I had that was already installed, it obviously was not - after uninstalling completly (using Revo Uninstaller to eradicate any parasites left in the registry from the install) I installed this version and now PM2IM seems to work (it now opens a DOS box, does it's work then closes the DOS box - I suspect this is correct behavior as now I AM left with an .im version of the file - yaayyyyyyaaaa):D

Appreciate the help and vigilance of everyone which found the underlying problem - just curious though why no one else has encountered this issue on their machine - perhaps I have fiddled some settings in XP to cause this trouble (I am a knob twiddler - always have been since childhood - could never get off elevators because the buttons impressed me - or rather I depressed them repeatedly:hehe:)

THANX
 
Those dlls use Windows Side-by-Side technology. (WinSxS) Basically you can have multiple versions of the same runtime libraries installed at the same time, and programs compiled for a specific version will use that version. The old (9x style) system was to replace older versions of a dll file with newer ones, but that could cause problems if a newer version of a dll acted differently then an older version. Thus why the original link didn't work but the SP1 link did: The program was made using the SP1 runtime so was looking for that specific version.

So my computer has got like 6 different versions of the C/C++ runtime libraries from MS Visual C++ 2005. Plus multiple versions of some of it's other runtime libraries. (In XP all those libraries are stored in folders in C:\Windows\WinSxS )
 
Well thank you EdrickV and thanks to everyone who helped out - I'm happy this worked out (don't take much to make me happy, eh?:hehe:)

Thanx....
 
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