Serious Serious Problem!

[Indy Anna Jones]

After doing a routine update, I went to play a game and noticed that all of the custom courses and libraries had been deleted from the course register. I tried to reinstall them both from the PGA course bin and after dragging them to desktop; no go with either method. So I deleted PGA from my computer (stupid me, I didn't uninstall.) I tried to reinstall the game, but the desk will neither let me install or uninstall (the necessary files are missing... again, my stupid.)

Any suggestions on how to overcome this mess?

[msmvet]

Hi Indy! After deleting manually all the files you could found, I would run CCleaner or Wise Registry Cleaner, to clean registry/path/program errors, and then make a fresh re-install of the hole thing. Hope it works!

[SteveHorn]

Indy! First off welcome back. I did something similar once and I can't be sure what I did to fix it. But first try to do a system restore to a date before you did your deleting. Then do a uninstall and reinstall. If that doesn't work uninstall once again then delete all PGA and Sierra files in your drives. Any courses or arch. files you can't recover should first be moved to another area of your computer before any deleting or uninstall( My Documents is a good place). Then go into registry and delete all PGA and Sierra files. DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING ELSE IN YOUR REGISTRY. I don't know what O.S. your using but if you go to "run" and type regedit in the box it should open your registry. Most of the PGA files can be found in the "software" sub category of the main category's and should be alphabetical to be easier to locate. You can of course try a registry cleaner if your uncomfortable playing around in your registry. That may work I don't know?

[Diguelo]

Anyone that is going to suffer with this problem, my suggestion in the first instance is to back up your entire PGA Folder, i think mine was in the region of 27 GB or so, but its worth doing.

Next go into the reegistry using REGEDIT, word of warning here just use this set of instructions.
Click on the search button in the menu and type in Sierra and do a search, unitl you find the one entry that has a list of all courses libraries and so on, right click on the Sierra folder and select export, Save the key file along with your backups. Makes reinstallation a breeze

Ok now your at the stage to do what Indie and a lot of have done a long while back, delete the sierra folder in its entirity, youll get a warning screen come up to let you know its too big for the recycle bin and do you want to wipe it completey, answer Yes

Ak Indi this is whats causing you issues, the regisrty has the Sierra main key in it, go through your registry using regedit and search, look for any and every mention of Sierra in the thing. As I recall theres usually 3 or 4 of them lying around, just right click on each folder and delete it from the registry.

When you thinik youve found them all do aanother search just to make sure.

Restart your computer, reinstall the game which should now go straight back where it was, put the patch in and then do the courses library thing. You can use the installer routine in game or use the one on the tools menu. Up to you.

Once youve got it all back in place, back it up onto an external hard drive as explained above as well as the registry key. Just in case.

Advice is free, take it or leave it the choice is yours.

[kalgari]

files you can't recover should first be moved to another area of your computer before any deleting or uninstall

by the way you can use Recuva or another software to recover your files from PC (check this guide).

[Polslad]

Anyone out there still?
This has just happened to me over the last few days.
Everything has disappeared from the course manager (just showing spaces) and stick items.
Game still runs on those only.
Cannot uninstall, saying there is a missing file or something.
In the past I have created another desktop user and loaded the game to that, but won't let me this time.
Game does not show up in uninstall list anyway.
I'm not a computer boffin whiz kid geek, just need some simple advise and help to fix this.
Could be the end of an era.
Gutted.

[Polslad]

'stock' items and 'advice'.

[BrianZ111]

The only way I know how to fix this problem is to uninstall and reinstall or install in a different windows profile. What problems are you running into trying to do this? I don't know why this happens, something goes wrong in the windows registry entries for the game in windows 8 (and Windows 10? I don't know, I don't have Windows 10) when installing courses or libraries. You could probably fix it by editing the registry but I don't know enough about what is going wrong to fix it manually and haven't taken the time to look into it. I just gave up on installing new courses on my Windows 8 laptop. I just have the stocks, my custom courses, and a few of my favorites installed now and I don't touch it. If I want to try a new course I use my Windows 7 desktop computer so don't I mess it up on my laptop.

[msmvet]

The same happened to me a couple of times. This may help you too Indy.

I think you have 2 choices:
1. Restore system to a previous spot. In this link is pretty much everything you need to know and how to do it.

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows ... m-restore/

2. What I did. I couldn´t unistall Pga from the unistall directory.

-.Manually delete Sierra folder. If you have any other pga related folders, delete them too.
-. Download and install Ccleaner by Piriform (It´s a free and SAFE program to do complex stuff in your registry, in a simple way. Basically, erases pieces and paths of deleted or unused programs left behind during unistalling or deleting) If you want, you could use it as well to clean your pc from junk files. (In the CLEAN section)

I´ve downloaded it from here:

https://ccleaner.uptodown.com/windows


-. Go to TOOLS and then to the UNISTALL tab. Search for Pga. If it doesn´t show on the list move on to the next step. If it´s shows, select it and hit the unistall button.
-. Go to REGISTRY and hit the ´Scan for issues´ button. Let it run. When it finishes, hit the ´Fix selected issues´ button.

That´s all. Should take about 10 min. to do it. Restart your pc and make a fresh install of the game. (One time during re-install program ask me for an .ocx file missing, if that happens I could send you both files and tell you where to drop them, it´s really easy to solve)
If you need further assistance let me know.

[Polslad]

Thanks for the suggestions, unfortunately nothing has worked.

I did all of the above (except for the registry bit, don't know how to do that), and now have ZERO PGA game showing on PC, no desktop icons, cant run the game from disk, no reference to program in uninstall menu.
When I try to install/uninstall from disk I get the following error message:

Windows cannot find 'C:\SIERRA\PGAGCE\unwise.exe'. Make sure you've typed the name correctly then try again.

It's the end of the world!
No PGA at all, at least until 20 minutes ago I could play the stock courses.
Now zilch.