Uninstalling trainz 2009

What steps would i need to take so as not to lose the routes i have built and all the content i have downloaded ?

hotgrove said:

What steps would i need to take so as not to lose the routes i have built and all the content i have downloaded ?

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Hello

In your Trainz 2009 folder, there should be a UserData folder. Inside that there should be a local folder. Copy the local folder to another location. Then you can uninstall TRS2009 while knowing you have a backup of your local content. You can then just copy it back over when it is re-installed or if you get a later version like 2010 or TS12.

thanks for the quick reply.

now it's time to own up.......i've just wiped out my best ever route and lost years of downloaded content through stupidity.

devastated....don't have the will to start again.

No back up of it, even a part of it ?

fran1 said:

No back up of it, even a part of it ?

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Afraid not fran......it's all gone.....about 4 single board routes and loads of content.

My own fault......i'll wait until next year before i even think about rebuilding.

You didn't do the user data thing? I know what its like to loose something you work so hard on. It feels even worse when it goes corrupt from something you cant identify. You don't want to start because you think it will happen again.

Thanks for the kind words.........it's losing my latest project that is killing me....it was a work in progress and easily the best i had put together........losing all that content seems like...... THE END.

As you say BD1 i can recover...........next year before i lay my next stretch of track again........i'm a complete idiot.

I feel for you. But backups are the most important thing you can have. Programs aren't important, but the data sure is.

Two years ago I lost two hard drives simultaneously after a power supply "blew up" on the inside. This took out the motherboard, video card, and two hard disks. I kept getting blue screens and felt it was urgent that I do a current backup. I have actually 3 internal hard disks, one is strictly for my Trainz TS12 install, and the others are for boot and backup. This is not a RAID, and is a JBOD, or a just a bunch of disks. While I was backing up my data, the system blue screened again, so I took my backup drive out and put it into my brother's system to copy off the data that was on that, just in case.

Well the copy said it would take 298 hours, or something like that using the USB reader, so I went to bed. The next morning his system had a blue screen, and my own system would not start at all. I never got a chance to backup my Trainz disk! I replaced the power supply, which got the system powered up, but the motherboard did not come to life. I replaced the mobo and then the video card, and then my boot drive. The boot drive wouldn't even spin. The backup drive, well the data was there and I could see it, but when I opened a folder, there was nothing. Gone! I rebooted the computer and the drive was blank. So much for about 86GBs of data which consisted of movies and videos from my storm chasing trips, some music programs I had worked on while in school, along with some teaching materials, my resume, and tons and tons of other stuff including documents I needed right away. All of the most important stuff was gone - went to bit heaven. Recovering the data, using an outside company, was out of the question due to the cost involved. I did inquire about this, but it was just too expensive for me.

I was lucky in that my Trainz stuff survived, well most of it. The hard drive wasn't being accessed by me, but it was still online in the system. My current route was mostly okay, but there were sections that were corrupt. I ended up chopping out a good hunk and rebuilding it again. I did have some backups on DVDs but they were old anyway, so going completely back too far was out of the question. I was able to pull some stuff from that and rebuild up and merge back in. This was before going to TS12 and the merge fiasco which still exists. Lucky I hadn't upgraded yet otherwise I'd have been totally hosed.

Now I'm the one who should have known better. I've worked in IT and in computer rooms since 1992 after spending 10 years before that as a hardware tech. How complacent could I have become? How lazy I had become. This will never happen to me. This is something that something that can happen! Shame on me. I don't blame the faulty parts. I blame myself for being complacent and stupid.

So today I have a consistent back up plan in place. I also backup important information, Trainz stuff is considered important, to external drives and to DVDs. If it's important, it goes external. Period. Today I'm still looking for stuff I've lost. Since I lost my entire Outlook PST file, I lost my entire inbox and all my contacts I had prior to the lost. Gone, and long gone to bit heaven. Live and learn.

John

I agree regarding backups.

An important note or two regarding backing up TS2009 data:

1.For TS2009 Service Pack 3 or earlier, you only need to back up <trainz install folder>/Local. For TS2009 Service Pack 4, you need to backup both <trainz install folder>/UserData/Original and <trainz install folder>/UserData/Local.
2.I would advise keeping the backup well away from the Trainz folder especially as it is likely that you would have to use a third-party uninstall tool to do the removal.

Shane