Nice very nice.
Well 2 weeks of mapping is gone not to mention my entire system hosed.

Everything is gone outta documents, start-menu, desktop, all shortcuts, everything..great.

All my maps are gone, even the opnes I backed up. Disappeared.

WTF????????? Would ZHLT even have a batch file that does that?

Christ I Am so pissed off as I lost everything on my computer.

Surrently I am trying to do a XP restore, but it conviently removed all shortcuts to that too.

GOD I AM PISSED.

System restore didn;t help other than return my start program menus.

EVERYTHING's gone.

ALL my MP3's (about 30 gigs worth). That just F*CKED my MP3 server.
All my documents.
All my DoD maps.
All my maps I was building.
All my favorites.
All my cookies.
OH more stuff gone:::
All zipped and compressed file...

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING THING IS GONE THAT WASN'T PART OR A DIRECT INSTALL.
IN OTHER WORDS ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT I HAVE SAVED, COPIED, TRANSFERRED, DOWNLOADED, PASTED, ETCCC IS FRICKING GONE.

Jesus...WTF?
I would really like to copy/paste about 40 pages of expletives.

WHY IS THE GOD DAMN HELL WOULD ANYONE EVEN INCLUDE A PROGRAM LIKE THAT?

I want to know where/why and how to fix it god damn it.

STOP THERE!
Do not create any more files on your hard drive

btw ZHLT wouldnt have a batch file that does that, it doesnt even have batch files

Go to www.pcinspector.de and download their file recovery tool

If you start replacing your HDD sectors with new files you wont be able to recover anything, start by recovering your important files

Its a batch named make ZHLT

it was included with the zipped files from VERC.

Well I have tried several system restores.

I am currently working to get norton to run over my network to it..its being a pain.

Here's the batch syntax:

rd /s ..\%1
mkdir ..\%1\pics

copy release\*.exe ..\%1
copy "%COMMONCPP%\bin\ccxx32.dll" ..\%1
copy *.html ..\%1
copy *.css ..\%1
copy docs\* ..\%1
copy docs\pics\*.jpg ..\%1\pics
copy docs\pics\*.gif ..\%1\pics
copy perl\*.pl ..\%1
copy *.wad ..\%1

pushd ..\%1
zip -9 -R %1.zip *
popd

copy release\*.map ..\%1


I did a system search for *.MP3, *.rmf *.map, etccc nothing..

It also originally wiped everything ogg the desktop but the rec bin.

make a batch out of it, run it, watch what happens :(

whatever it was, download that file recovery program and restore your important files :)

well apparently it isn;t working.
I DL'd it

I select the drive and hit find lost files and it doesn't do anything, just selects the lost files folder which had 0 objects.

well its not finding anything.
The few things I was able to find, even though they were in "good" condition just end up corrupted after the recovery.

Like I found my map that I was working on, Hammer crashes left and right now.

I give up, this is crap.

yep happened to mae yestersday had the zhlt filesi n my docuemtns deleted everything in it :/

Hold on explain what you downloaded and what happened exactly, to me it sounds like u downloaded a batch file that deleted your system, well that batch file was probably a virus of some sort made to delete your system, so next time, make your own batch compiler like i did

sounds like a virus....

It basically deleted everything on my computer as stated above.
I got the files from VERC so I THOUGHT they were trustworthy.
EVERYTHING is gone except installed programs that XP was able to restore through system restore.

I pasted the syntax exactly from the batch file above.
I dare you to copy it and make a batch from it.
It's embedded in the ZHLT from VERC....

I can say, I had a great first time map, it looked VERY good actually and I was just ot the point of adding in models.

I have a very secure firewall so the only place the virus, if it is one, could have come from is from the ZHLT I DL'd.

Norton 2003 never found anything.
Says its not a virus, I even made sure the definitions were updated.

I am sending this in to Norton as soon as I can figure out how, this is such BS.

And it WASN'T a batch compiler.
It's a batch file alright, but its with-in ZHLT it's called:

name: makezhlt
file type: windows NT command script

You downlaoded and ran that from the ZHLT SOURCE FILES - used if you are going to make custom changes to Zoner's tools - NOT the standard Windows executable that you should be using if you are just compiling maps. You shouldn't have been playing with that if you're just making maps. It is not a virus - it is there for a purpose.

i'm going with DMW on this one

it's probably the batch that compiles the ZHLT themselves that has erased your HD. And no, that's not a virus at all. It's a program you executed ignorant to what it really does. That's just bad luck it did the worst to your system rather then erasing just one folder.

The golden rule you've broken here is: ALWAYS MAKE BACKUPS.

It happened to me too: once, I left my pc running win98 to go to a store, when I came back, my HD had crashed erasing every file I had not to mention the damage to the HW itself... and yes, I didn't had any backups.
Now, I have every important file such as HL-mod exe's, mp3's, movies, etc. burned down on CD or whatever just in case.

so there's some good advice for the future too.

maybe the readme should have more information that just version #'s?
Or the included instructions should mention the file?
I mean makezhlt doesn't that sound like you would need to run it to MAKE ZHLT?

I mean crap.

And yeah I had back ups, on other partitions, it wiped everything on those too.

At the very least this file should be default hidden, and if it's supposed to compile ZHLT then why does it wipe your whole system?

Seems poor design and a bomb waiting to happen to anyone...

And as far as backing up 30 gig's+ of data on CD...heh.

I am pretty disappointed to say the least.

But on the brighter side DoD crashes even more often now.
Too bad there is ZERO tech support.

Yup, sounds like you've run the Makefile for the ZHLT program and its tried to actual re-compile ZHLT.

Makefiles when run, make a lot of temp files and as a consequence do a lot of deleting as part of the tidy up (Unix ones delete a LOT for example).

If you copied that batch out of the source tree to somewhere else and ran it, its likely it executed its delete command on the wrong files and nuked your hard disk.

- Jed

maybe the readme should have more information that just version #'s?
Or the included instructions should mention the file?


Well, it is clearly labelled on the VERC site:

"Windows executables
(If you're a mapper using Windows and all you need to do is compile maps, get this).


Win32 Source
If you plan on making changes to the Windows version of ZHLT - Custom Build, you'll need the above package.
Please read the included documentation before"

And as pointed out above, it was the fact you misunderstood what it was for and ran it from the incorrect location that cuased your problem. This whole mapping biz is unsupported except by your peers. It always has been a case of "at your own risk".

speaking of crashes...

one of my HD's just crashed yesterday... lucky me I had some backups of most things including my maps and other important documents :)

Well I dunno whats wrong now.
I reloaded everything, and the only map I had a backup of is just a blank black void.
I can;t believe it went across multiple partitions.
OH well.
I STILL think there should be documentation saying not to run this file, or at the very least name it something better.

I know many of you are gloating how you make backups of everything, but obviously you are not understanding that A: I had well over 30 gigs of stuff, thats like 40 CD worth, and B: I had some back-ups on totally seperate partitions, which were wiped too.

This is a very dangerous file, I would recommend everyone tell other mappers about it...