I know ,not him again

[hurricane3]

If anyone can help ,I don't know how but 3/4 of my icons in my main gauges turned to windows zip files instead of gauge files. Now I can,t copy and paste gauges to the gauge file. This happened after I have been trying to get the panel on Milton Shupes D 18 ski plane to work.
How to I change the files back to gauge files so they will accept gauges?
Like I said this happened after I wrote about the gauges on the D 18 and I had installed several planes after. I took a break and when I came back I tried to put in the Alpha Boston and the gauges wouldn't go in.I opened the gauge file and found most all the gauge files were now zip files ,so not seeing any way to go back to gau. files I tried windows explorer files and that didn't work.
Since this is the 5th time I've had problems trying to put everything back into FS9 ,if I can't fix it (I know I've said this a million times before ) but I've had it. All this does is aggravate me, this isn't a hobby it's an exercise in frustion.

[Blackbird686]

Some gauge files that appear in "zip" format are actually "gauges" themselves. Do not try to unpack or remove the contents by "extracting" the zip. The gauges definately won't work then. Are you sure they weren't in zip format when they went into your gauges folder to begin with? I have a cazillion "zip" files in my gauges folder for numerous aircraft and they all work just fine.

I have never seen a ".gau" file turn into a "zip" file before.:pop4:

BB686:USA-flag:

[tgibson]

If they still have the file extension .gau (which I assume are the ones you are talking about?), they will still work in FS, and you should be able to copy and paste them no problem, no matter what icon they have. The icon is determined in Windows. In XP, in Windows Explorer you open Tools/Folder Options/File Types. Then you find the entry for GAU in the list. Click on it to highlight it, then click Delete. The icon should go back to a default type.

If instead you are talking about CAB files (groups of XML gauges compiled together), then I assume you installed some zip/unzip program that changed the icon. CAB files (again, in default XP) are not as flexible as ZIP files - you can extract a file from them, but you cannot add or delete a file to a CAB file (as I remember). Other programs are more flexible.

Hope this helps,

[Sunny9850]

Tom is on the right track I think. Something simply changed the file extension association of your OS and what used to be shown as filename.cab is now shown as filename.zip
I hope that after our last discussion of such things you have started to use the built in Windows Recovery system to create restore points either automatically or manually before going into to bowels of your installation.

if yes then the easiest fix to get zip issue resolved might be to simply go to Start-->Windows Help-->System Recovery. Do me a favor though...

1. Take your time doing this. Maybe read up a bit by doing a web search on "using windows system recovery" or similar in Google. You and I have been down this road before and know that what due to my job is second nature for me sometimes goes horribly wrong for you and we don't want that.

2. Before going back to what is called an earlier restore point let Windows create one of the current state. This way if your attempts go bad you have a fallback point to at least where you are now.

Cheers
Stefan

[hurricane3]

When they turned to zip files the gauges folder would no longer accept gauges from planes. I'am running Windows 7 and just before I took a break I had no problems installing a couple of planes.The thing that alerted me was the gauges from the Boston wouldn't paste into the gauges folder.Also could that be the reason the D18 's gauges won't work, although all the other plane gauges seem to work.

[hurricane3]

I have tried to use it but it always says no files were restored because your virus scannner was on which it wasn't.
I have found one thing, other planes gauges will go in ,but the Boston's gauges won't, so it must be something to do with the gauges.
I would still like to know why the Beech D 18's gauges won't work. Nothing against Milton I'am probly doing somthing wrong.

[hurricane3]

I redownloaded the Boston III from Alpha/Virtava and used RAR to extract it and everything went in. Now back to my first question ,why don't the D 18 skis version gauges work and why are some missing? This is nothing against Mr Shupe,, I think he's one of the best, I must be doing something wrong.

[Milton Shupe]

I apologize for the problems I caused you with the Ski version.

I did not include all the .cab files in that release; the panel folder was only partly populated.

I guess most people had the original D18S or got around this by aliasing or copying the cab files to the ski version.

It is interesting that no one has reported this issue to me after all this time.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention and I apologize for not being here to help sort it out.

Thanks to all of you that assisted.

[hurricane3]

Thanks Milton ,but there is no need to apologize.Your one of the best makers of planes ,I could never do what you do.
Maybe my problems will help others. I just thankyou for all youve given us over the years.