This is less of a HEK question but more of a general PC question. I've been working on a map (not worth showing, I'm trying to go by the golden rule of never uploading my first map-) but I broke a tag and since then tool has been kicking me up the ass to the point where actually finding and fixing the error is beyond my short attention span. The changes I made are basic however so I did not have a whole lot of time and effort invested in said map. I figured the easiest route would be to delete my entire tags folder, re-extract tags from maps, and start over again. However, upon doing so, I cannot access the majority of the files I extracted. This was a problem I had before and overcame however I have completely forgotten how I did so. I believe this has something to do with properties/security of certain folders. I'm sure there is a basic step that I'm missing but I'd appreciate the help.



This is what I initially see in my tags folder after extracting all the tags from the standard bloodgulch.map. However, when I open up sapien I can see that the files/folders are still in my computer, but hidden due to some lock thingymajigger that I don't know how to get rid of:



So yeah, I hope I have clearly explained my problem. I figured that I've been here long enough and have enough well thought out ideas that I ought to actually start properly learning how to use the HEK to produce content.

Don't worry. This is like the #1 most encountered problem in the past few months/weeks i've been reading the forums. What happened was that you did not run either tool, guerilla, sapien or HEK+ as admin.

To fix this, go to the folders with lock icons in windows explorer and there should be a new button in the window called "Show compatibility files". Click on that and all your hidden tags should be there (cut and paste it). Or, do a search on the tag names and the hidden files should be in a directory with "virtual store" in its name or something. That directory should be the place were all your hidden tags are.

From [http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=46275]:
"This is what happens when you have window UAC enabled. If you don't know what that is, it's windows's crappy version of linux's built in file permissions system.

Programs that aren't run as admin can't write files to some directories such as C:\Program Files\. Files that are written there are instead sent into a symbolic link under the virtual store\ directory.

Disabling UAC stops this action from happening so you don't have to run programs as admin and deal with files going into the virtual store directory in the first place.

Just saying, by the way. It's up to you if you really want to disable UAC since it is a security feature, but to me it's just a hassle in my opinion. I'm not even really sure how this is supposed to increase security in any way, soo yeah.



I guess if you reaally don't want to disable UAC but still want to solve the hassle with write permissions, you could also reinstall halo and hek into a non write protected directory like the My Documents folder and optionally add a symbolic link to c:\program files\microsoft games\halo custom edition which would make it as if the halo's root directory is in program files but it is actually in my documents."

This is probably the easiest way to fix your problem. And if you want to get those tags you already extracted, go to C:\Users\*yourname*\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Halo Custom Edition and copy the tags folder somewhere else.
And to get there you have to disable the "dont show hidden files, folders or drives" option in the folder settings (from control panel).