[SOLVED] X3AP Mods reappear after reinstall - Fixed by clean reinstall.

[Imikar]

So having been playing X3 with mods for about six years, I've finally come across a problem I can't seem to solve with a simple search of these forums or the wider internet. These problems occurred on a machine running Windows 7, on X3AP v3.1 (bought separately, not as part of any bundle) starting the game through Steam.

I decided to do a clean reinstall of X3AP so I could play with the X3 Rebalance Mod. Unfortunately, upon starting what I thought was a clean install, I was rather confused to find that Combat Mod and a cockpit mod (I think PSC01) were already installed. I assumed I'd just missed something on the first uninstall, so made sure to delete the entire addon folder this time. The exact same thing happened again.

Since then I've tried every piece of advice I could find online to no avail.
- I followed the steps detailed in the FAQ for clearing the VirtualStore (there was nothing there for X anyway).
- I've verified the integrity of my game cache half a dozen times having tried deleting anything I thought could be the problem.
- I've done full reinstalls about three times now, including after having uninstalled the plugin manager and deleting any save files I could find (along with anything that looked like a backup file for Steam).
- I've run it with all of the cat and dat files save for 01.cat and 01.dat deleted.

I get the same problem every time. The mods are still present even on what should be a clean reinstall, and even after everything that could possibly be their false patch file has been deleted. The only thing I haven't yet tried is uninstalling Terran Conflict as well, which I would rather avoid doing if possible.

Any advice on this would be appreciated, I really don't know how this could be happening or what else to try. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Alan Phipps]

After you uninstall or delete local content and *before* you reinstall or verify the game, you must manually delete the relevant Steam gamefolder (Drive:\Steam\steamapps\common\gamename) to remove the 3rd party files that the uninstaller will not know about and so will not remove them.

While the 'addon' folder is the X3AP code element, this game also uses the X3TC gamefiles which is probably where your mods were sitting and so you need to clean up and probably reinstall X3TC as well.

[Imikar]

I've deleted the addon folder after uninstalling and before reinstalling/verifying and it's not worked, so the TC uninstall/reinstall is looking like the only option. Though I know for a fact that the mods in question were installed in the addon folder (had a list lying around saying which mod each renumbered cat/dat file was part of, a rare moment of organisation for me...). I do have both mods installed on TC as well, now I think about it, so I'll try uninstalling TC and see how it goes. Thanks for the swift reply


Edit: And I just noticed something rather odd - when I uninstalled AP it also removed my TC cat and dat files 01-13. No idea if it did this the other three or four times, I just noticed now by pure luck.

[Imikar]

And we would appear to have a fix! Combat mod and the cockpit mod are gone. Steam seems to think that everything in the TC folder is also part of AP, judging by the way it uninstalled and reinstalled, gonna try running with the No Steam exe in the hope of avoiding this stuff in the future (side note: stuff like that is why I love Egosoft).

Many thanks for the swift help