unable to find PW data?

[Frandoxxx]

I have played AE everyday with no problems imagine my shock when I started the game tonight and got this message:

ERROR: unable to find PW data!

what the frak is going on?

[Sonny II]

Have you been moving or deleting any files?

[Frandoxxx]

That was the weird part was not doing anything file wise to AE.
The only thing i could figure to do was to (groan) uninstall/reinstall AE and the current patches. I saved the SAVE file from my old game and moved the contents to the save file in the new install once I got it up. Works OK now, but a lot of work and big mystery how the PW got lost!? [&:]

[ChickenOfTheSea]

This happened in WITP also when a hidden file was missing. I ran into this problem when I tried to create duplicate installs for multiple mods in the same directory (it wasn't a problem if you copied your install to your user directory before installing the mod, then cutting and pasting back to the Matrix directory.

So most likely, you lost your hidden file for some reason rather than an issue with the pwhex file. Sonny II raises a good point.