After reading all the tankman patch's to xcom email I thought it sounded like an easy fix. Just install XCOM EMAIL and run the xcom turn sender with tankmans systray and boom it works. Well again a better idiot has been developed and I can't get it to run. Let me give a step by step what I've done and then maybe somebody can help me.

1.) bought and installed Xcom Email.
2.) Download and expanded EXOFFLINE and Turnsender.
3.) Read the readme from both.
4.) Installed Turnsender.
5.) Tried to edit the windows registry item for the xem file type. Could not figure out exactly how to edit this file and probably did it wrong. It had two lines in it.
a.) default REG_SZ XEMFILE
and
b.) Content Type REG_SZ

From the readme I figured you had to alter the b.) this file and tried to make a \shell\open\Command argument. That did not work.

Where I am now. When I run turnsender it tells me "Please check to see you are using the right executable. The offline version should be your default program NB. Remember to check the case"

When I try to run the XCOM Tankman version it tells me that I can't start a game from Player two version.

When I to run the origianl Xcom version it goes through the turn and then when it comes to the 'sending' part times out as it can't find the Hasbro server.

I'll try to check this forum to see if anybody can step me through getting this to work but man am I frustrated. If you can, I would very much welcome an email on a step by step sent to me gregg-webster@uiowa.edu. I imagine this isn't that hard and I'm just not doing something slight right?

Anyway any help would be cool.

Thanks,
Gregg Webster

I don't know much about that either, but from some reason I don't
think it's necessary to edit the registery file (!) .
Win98 has an interface (right word? ) for that.

So I don't feel as dumb as I did but let me tell you how I got this to work for all you guys out there that have not.

When you go to to edit xem file in the registry you actually want to edit the xemfile item. It is the second entry if you do a search for xem in the registry. Most of you probably know that as you've done this before but for somebody like me I just saw the first .XEM in the reg and started hacking away at it.

Now a follow up question for anybody who know...

I got this running and it does send me the email of the game and then (after it has sent the email it says can't find server. Is that normal. It is only a slight problem and does not stop me from playing the email game.

Thanks,
Gregg Webster

Hi

As far as I remember that only occured on the first turn when I used it. Have you talked to Alan, Tankman or Miss Chief about this yet ?

indeed, it is only the first turn that you send with the original executable, and hence only for the first turn is it supposed to come up with any server errors.

all subsequent turns you use the new offline version.

let ex-com.exe be the name of the original program (i can't remember what it's called off hand)
let ex-com-offline.exe be the new one

1. start up the turn sender program (exsystray or some such, check the manual)
2. run ex-com.exe and start a game
3. when you send it will have an error, this is fine, it should have sent anyway
4. now when your opponent replies with a turn you play that one using ex-com-offline.exe, which you should have set to open all .xem files by default.
5. play, send, repeat (from 4)