My UI is resetting, partly. How to stop it?

Recently I copied my EQ folder and used it to make a second EQ folder so I could box both accounts on my laptop. While this is quite gratifying one the one hand, I am finding that every time I relog, a huge number of my activated AA buttons are wiped clean, AND that the character select screen defaults back to the first name on the list, where I would expect it to default to last character played.

There does not seem to be any rhyme nor reason to this, and I have no UI's from external sources installed. For instance, Arcane Whisper and HoT on my first and second buttons on my primary (1 - 0, -, =) button strip have survived the relogging I did a short while ago, but the two buttons I created in the social buttons area for Beguilers Banishment and some other AA I do not now recall, are gone from the bar and from Socials Page(s) so my clever work around of coding in the alt activation numbers is a bust. boo hoo hoo

The closest I have ever come to a custom UI is copying layouts from other characters after spending time painstakingly arranging the on screen elements in a way I find benefiicial.

Buttons that had items in bags no longer, in some cases, find the items and now say Not Found and buttons that had AA abilities attached now say Not Usable.

Is there any recommended workaround, or is this something you have seen, and can offer a fix for?

I just went through two massive (9.5 GB) downloads, so I expect that most of the files in the EQ directories are fresh. The original folder that the second, malfunctioning account is a copy of, is working perfectly well. Since I do not have access to the original machine that I installed the game on, my desktop, I have no optical drive to install anything from, and I am really hopeful that I will not need to re install again. After the install, I went in and removed all of the files that obviously did not belong (UI_accountOneCHaracterName_serverName.ini and the like) and created from one copied file of the same template, fiiles for the characters on the account. In the process, I tried several times to change the Read-Only attribute on the folder to not be read only, because I thought that might be the issue, or part of it. This didn't stick, despite my being the only administrator for any of the machines here. Anyway, when I looked at the Properties of the EverquestA folder with the account that is functioning properly, that is also Read-Only, so I guess that isn't the problem.

I have run out of ideas. Can you help me?

Please feel free to ask me for clarification on anything that seems muddles here. I will respond in as timely a manner as I am able.

On the EQ shortcut set it to Admin privileges, and make sure your shortcuts are going to the corresponding folder...

And on the read only, make sure to do it for subfolders also. Once done that is good. There are some components that are set to read only that can not be changed, not sure exactly which ones but that is why the read only is partially check marked

Just out of curiosity, why are you running two separate EQ folders? I three box and all characters share the same files. The non-character-specific stuff does get replicated across all three, but so far that hasn't really been a hindrance.

This is looking very promising. I have logged out and back in again a couple times, and so far see that the buttons I removed Not Found and Not Usable buttons from have not returned, which is a welcome change, as well as the Social buttons that I labeled 001, 002 and 003 have retained this menaingless value through a logging out fully and starting the app from scratch.

I am greatly encouraged that this could work, Sarkaukar, thank you for your time and the helpful information.

I had read somewhere, at some point, that this was a preferable idea to running two instances from the same folder. I do not recall the particulars, just the bottom line. Perhaps at some point I will try it with one folder and save the ~9.6 GB of space.

First I will focus on getting my desktop back in the action.

Thanks for your interest.

Great to hear.

As for two instances, it can be preferred if needing to use different settings, such as display settings, keyboard settings, etc, especially between primary account and boxed/secondary accounts.

As for the Admin privileges, if using default location Windows UAC requires the permission. If game folders were located in another location, such as c:\games\everquestA , \everquestB then the UAC is not as involved, which all started with Vista OS.