Ofp deleting everything on harddisk!

[Matthijs 40]

Our dedicated server admin (a directplay server) apparently had this happen to him too a few times. When he started the OFP Dedicated server for the first time after a clean windows install the whole partition got cleaned. It happened two times in a row I think, dunno what he did to get it to work...

Removed Win2k, installed XP, problem disappeared. Could have been the OS, but I think it's more likely some other package on the system got OFP upset.

[GoOB 0]

Something weird... the mIRC folder was there when i conducted a file/folder search. But all the files were deleted and i could only run the original mIRC (without NNscript) And also my winzip seems to be gone, although i can still find winzip with a file/folder search i can not open a .zip file....

[theavonlady 2]

Are you all using the standard European or US versions of OFP?

[Matthijs 40]

Are you all using the standard European or US versions of OFP?

European.

[GoOB 0]

The euro version of CWC and the euro version of RES (thus the English version) I also have the English version of Red Hammer installed. This started like last night i think when i was alt+tabbing in and out of OFP tp check on mIRC. Then all of a sudden mIRC disappears from the taskbar and i get the world renowned "cannot find <insert filename here>" type of thing. But after i re-installed mIRC and winzip everything works fine   Except i get a message everytime i start the computer "cannot find office autostart it is referring to a place that is not present on this computer nor the network" Something like that, it's a rough translation from Swedish so bear with me eh?

[GoOB 0]

On top of this it seems my office package has been removed.. heck never used it anyways. The only useful thing in it is still there though MS word   Well great! now i cant even open a .JPG with the microsoft photo viewer! Any theories about what this might be? A virus or a HD crash?

[GoOB 0]

By the way does this small portion of my router log look suspicous?

2003/05/30 17:52:36 DHCP Client : Send Request, Request IP = 217.208.94.130

2003/05/30 17:52:36 DHCP Client : Receive Ack from 10.0.113.1, Lease time = 1200

2003/05/30 18:02:36 DHCP Client : Send Request, Request IP = 217.208.94.130

2003/05/30 18:02:36 DHCP Client : Receive Ack from 10.0.113.1, Lease time = 1200

My IP is : 217.208.94.130

Would be grateful for any help

[grayghost 0]

Nope, looks like an ARP protocol 'ping' (happens all the time) or a DHCP IP lease, which is also fine.

In order ot be able to tell if this is normal or not you'd have to inquire about the DHCP configuration of your ISP.

Basically this says that your IP is leased for an interval of 1200 seconds, and its is then re-erequested every 1200 or so seconds to re-lease it.

[Petroizki 0]

ok, yesterday i did exactly the same thing, i choose 'DirectPlay' and hit the host button (just testing, i only have modem). The game freezed and i waited a while, nothing happened so i pushed restart. When i got back to windows, it popped a message telling me that my desktop folder had disappeared. Well that was great news! especially because i use the desktop folder for all my "temporary" stuff, something like 2gig's of stuff i have collected over the years...

The formatting had stopped in the 'Documents and Settings' -folder, and i noticed that 'boot.ini' -file and 'C_DILLA' -folder had disappeared from the root dir. See what i'm saying? The files are deleted in alphabetical order, i don't think just normal format would do that.

The Windows XP's 'system restore', recovered couple of files, and all the empty folders, but it also messed up the hd so badly that it was impossible to recover most of the files with programs, that are made for that purpose. (silly me, i thought the system restore would bring all the files back..)

I just created a new partition for Flashpoint, and i will start debugging it to see what causes this horrible action. Is this some fancy FADE stuff? I use the no-cd crack because it makes life a lot easier (i have one cd-drive, and i play OFP a lot, get the hint?), but as a programmer i would never even think such a protection for game. Maybe the coder's original idea was to start scanning and deleting the files from the game folder, but he never tested it. Maybe it's just an accident, the program starts to clear some temporary folder and instead, starts to format the root. Well either way, i hope i find out the reason.

EDIT: yep, just tested, it happens with the original exe too, so i guess the files get deleted by accident.

[Guest]

There is some very good recorvery software available for free out there (soz...I don't have any links). They can recover "deleted" items.

When you "delete" something, what it really does is put a ? at the front of the file name. This is a Windows thing, so that file can now be over-written, and can't be accessed anymore. There are programs that can recover these files. That's also why you can't use ? in the name of a file.

[Petroizki 0]

oh right, it's clear to me now.

Operation Flashpoint deletes the files, there is no doubt of it. I have found the function which makes this caos, and i will gather some more information and e-mail it to BIS, let's hope they will do something about it.

I also tested the game in W2k and no formatting happened there..

Leone, yes i have a file recover program, but the system restore owerwritted most of the files (it made a new restore point).

[theavonlady 2]

oh right, it's clear to me now.

Operation Flashpoint deletes the files, there is no doubt of it. I have found the function which makes this caos, and i will gather some more information and e-mail it to BIS

Please post it here as well. All of us would like to get an idea of what's causing this and how vulnerbale we all are to getting our own files deleted.

Quote[/b] ], let's hope they will do something about it.

They've never ignored such serious issues before.

[Guest]

Leone, yes i have a file recover program, but the system restore owerwritted most of the files (it made a new restore point).

Well that's still recoverable....but that's getting into the much more hardcore recovery programs...and I don't know if they are free anywhere.

[Petroizki 0]

ok, this is the copy i send to Suma (i searched BIS e-mail for an hour, and none seem to exist);

Quote[/b] ]Hello, may i give you a warning about very serious issue, where Operation Flashpoint 1.91 might format the hard-drive. You may already have seen a thread about this problem in the message board; http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....52;st=0

Flashpoint formats my hard-drive (partition to be exact) every time when i host a new MP game in Windows XP, and only when i use 'DirectPlay', this does not happen with 'sockets'. Forgive me, but i have debugged the Flashpoint code and i think i have found the bug. I didn't bother to seek further, but i guess you can do that yourself.

Here is my lucky guess about what is going on;

For some reason Flashpoint deletes some files when starting a new MP game, but that's not important, important thing is that it uses a function that deletes folder, it's files and subfolders. You are using wildchar (*.*) for the file seeking, and you use some argument format -function to combine the folder name and the wildchar ("%s\\*.*"). I think the function name does not exist, and only result from the argument format function is "\\*.*", now, can you imagine what it does when you start seeking files to be deleted. (I tested the FindFirstFile function (the same as you use) with the "\\*.*" string, and it returns the first file in my C:\ root!).

I may be wrong about this, but still, i am 100% positive that Flashpoint is responsible for formatting my hard-drive, and something must be done.

I think this is very, very serious problem, and i can only suggest you to publish a new update which fixes this.

regards, "Petroizki"

I don't have any idea what are the changes to get your hd formatted, but if it can happen to me, it can happen to you...

[bn880 5]

This only happens when you press restart after hosting the game?

EDIT: Ah ok I see. That is a very serious problem...

[grayghost 0]

Minor correction: The function is deleting your files, not formatting the hard drive (yes, big diff)

[Matthijs 40]

Minor correction:  The function is deleting your files, not formatting the hard drive (yes, big diff)

Correct. The longer you wait before halting OFP, the more files will be gone. It's only deleting files from the partition OFP is installed on, and it leaves custom-addons on the harddisk, much like the OFP uninstall.

[Petroizki 0]

heh. sorry my bad, i always think that "format" just means deleting everything...

Well, it still cannot delete every file, only those which aren't used at the moment, such as OFP addons, and exe... but it cannot be compared with OFP uninstall that's for sure!!

oh, and Suma saw my message, so he will probably do something about this..

[Guest BratZ]

Wow great work guys !! Sorry for any files gone : (

[maruk 80]

We can confirm loss of all data on the hard drive partition can really happen under some circumstances. See

Troubleshooting FAQ Topic for more information about it.

We apologize to all users that lost anything due to this problem and we also thank all users that helped us to investigate the problem.

[Taku 0]

An old thread

Dec. 09 2002,14:54 was the starting date for that thread, thanks for the fast reply...

[Taku 0]

They made it!

Looks like they figured out what is causing this.

[nyles 11]

Sooooo, are we gonna get a new patch to fix this serious issue? I think you owe us one, BIS.

P.S.

If there will be a fix, please include some other fixes as well. You should know by now, what those fixes could be good for.

[turms 0]

petition to fix the bug would be in order?

[Taku 0]

I hope U can fix this problem ASAP, a quick solution for this could be a simple patch which disables Directplay from Multiplayer menu? I believe there's a lot of people who doesn't know that OFP can erase all your files from your hard drive partition.

I'm happy that I never installed OFP to my C: partition and saved my Windows.