Disappearing or non-working profiles in Vista

[Pilotti]

I am using Vista (32 bit) and I had some difficulties to get TrackIR to work with Ship Simulator 2008. Some axels were reversed, hot keys did not work, custom profiles (all of them) randomly disappeared from the list of available profiles. Actually when my own Ship Sim profile disappeared, TrackIR worked in the game, but of course my profile settings were not in use.

I noticed that you are still using Program Files folder to save user configurable data. Please, don't do that! It is not allowed in Vista. Move all profiles to %appdata%\NaturalPoint\TrackIR, and do not use %ProgramFiles%\NaturalPoint\TrackIR. If you are trying to write anything to ProgramFiles after program installation, Vista virtualizes that folder. And that seems to be problem here.

Virtualized TrackIR profile folder is located in "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\NaturalPoint\TrackIR4\Profiles".

I had different profile files in real "C:\Program Files\NaturalPoint\etc" and in the virtualized one. Only after I manually copied all my profile files to both folder, TrackIR started to work properly in Ship Simulator 2008.

Because AppData folder is available in previous Windows versions too, there is no reason to not use it.

[VincentG]

I will run it by the development team.....

[VincentG]

Which version of Vista are you running?

The issues with the axes being off, ghas been brought up with the game devloper, it seems to be tied into the direction that you are facing, within the gaming application.

[Pilotti]

I have Vista Ultimate 32bit. UAC is enabled but silently accepting elevation prompts (this setting is enabled with TweakUAC.exe).

[Pilotti]

Now it happened again. I started TrackIR, launched game. TrackIR worked, but not my custom hot keys. Ship Sim profile had disappeared from available profiles (but my Flight Simulator X profile still existed). I checked folders:

..\VirtualStore\Program Files\NaturalPoint\TrackIR4\Profiles: Ship_Simulator_2008.xml OK.

C:\Program Files\NaturalPoint\TrackIR4\Profiles: No Ship_Simulator_2008.xml file.

Next I did not anything else but started both game and TrackIR again. This time head tracking worked but none of hot keys, not my own or the default keys worked.

Third try: I copied Ship_Simulator_2008.xml from VirtualStore to C:\Program Files\NaturalPoint\TrackIR4\Profiles. Now TrackIR worked in the game and was using my profile.

To see real Program Files and not the virtualized one, you have to launch Explorer using admin rights.

[VincentG]

I wonder if it could be something in regards to, TweakUAC.exe, that is causing the issue, as I have never seen this issue come up.

[VF19_Wolf_Rider]

Strangenesses be occurring indeed....

I deleted the profiles from the Programs Folder/ Naturalpoint/ etc, etc as well as the profile file from the virtualisation folder... Now my TIR can edit a profile without crashing.
TIR writes a new Default profile to the virtualisation Folder @ size 3.98Kb as well as a new Default profile to the Program Files/ Naturalpoint folder.

VistaHome 32bit