Strange doings on the start screen

[OldProf]

For the past few days, my TS2016 start screen has looked like this:



Are any other forum folk seeing this? What could be causing it? Could BNSF be behind it?

Just for the record, yes, I have performed a cache verification, so no one needs to suggest that age-old, supposed cure-all.

Thanks.

[trev123]

Do you start in online mode? I see the message This Photo No Longer Available.

[OldProf]

Do you start in online mode? I see the message This Photo No Longer Available.

Yes, I do. And I saw that message, too, of course. So?

[buzz456]

Do you start in online mode? I see the message This Photo No Longer Available.

Yes, I do. And I saw that message, too, of course. So?

So if you in fact have a good connection with Steam why would the picture that comes from Steam not be available?

[Bananarama]

IIRC, any linked images come from a site owned by DTG - at least, that's how they used to deliver ads/images.

[trev123]

If you look in your Railworks/data/texture/frontend folder the startup screens are stored in there. They are one complete picture not divided in half.

[OldProf]

If you look in your Railworks/data/texture/frontend folder the startup screens are stored in there. They are one complete picture not divided in half.

Okay, I looked in that folder and almost all of the images are in tga format, so that's sent me searching for an appropriate viewer. The one I found will only load one image at a time and I don't know which images are supposed to be there. I found 2 files that strike me as possible problems. One, background.jpg, is the image that currently appears in front of the menu background (including the words "This photo is no longer available"), while the second seems to be a previous version of the same image, named background.jpg.MD5. After moving those two files to the desktop, I started TS2016 and -- lo and behold -- that fixed the problem. Of course, the question is where did those two files come from?

Meanwhile, one of DTG's help-folk has suggested that, "a complete reinstall of Train Simulator should reinstate all of your files and solve the issue you have described". So much for drastic, draconian, dismal, dismaying advice!

If anyone else encounters this problem, I suggest following the procedure I've described above. Good day and good luck!

Many thanks for the helpful hint, trev123.

[Chacal]

I just want to interject that a .md5 file is a cryptographic hash of another file.
It is a signature used to verify that the other file is legit and unchanged.
So the game may be using background.jpg.MD5 to check for integrity of background.jpg.

[buzz456]

" cryptographic hash". Is that some nerd technical term?

[trev123]

If you look in your Railworks/data/texture/frontend folder the startup screens are stored in there. They are one complete picture not divided in half.

Okay, I looked in that folder and almost all of the images are in tga format, so that's sent me searching for an appropriate viewer. The one I found will only load one image at a time and I don't know which images are supposed to be there. I found 2 files that strike me as possible problems. One, background.jpg, is the image that currently appears in front of the menu background (including the words "This photo is no longer available"), while the second seems to be a previous version of the same image, named background.jpg.MD5. After moving those two files to the desktop, I started TS2016 and -- lo and behold -- that fixed the problem. Of course, the question is where did those two files come from?

Meanwhile, one of DTG's help-folk has suggested that, "a complete reinstall of Train Simulator should reinstate all of your files and solve the issue you have described". So much for drastic, draconian, dismal, dismaying advice!

If anyone else encounters this problem, I suggest following the procedure I've described above. Good day and good luck!

Many thanks for the helpful hint, trev123.

Not a problem Tom. You may have started TS when there was momentary glitch in the system somewhere when loading that caused the problem. I remember when I had TS2015, a couple of times the startup screen was the TS2014 one.