My apologies in advance to those who will find this query an easy one.

Basically I downloaded and extracted the big world mod to the bg2 folder, I follow all the instructions but can't seem to work as I keep gettin the following message at the part where you set up the various pathways.

"The Baldurs Gate II folder you entrered is not correct. It is important that this folder is named correctly. Please close the Big World Setup, rename the folder to BGII-SoA and put it in the same folder as Baldurs Gate.

Open the baldur.ini in the BG2 folder with a text editor like notepad and go to ALIAS to change the correct BG2 folder in the lines.
Start the BWS and select the BGII-SoA directory again. The Baldurs Gate II folder you entered does not contain a full installation. At least the file CD5\Movies\25movies.bif is missing"

Things ive done:
-Put the BGII folder into the BG folder.
-Renamed BGII folder to BGII-SoA
-Wrote the new path in the baldur.ini replacing ALIAS with C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Baldurs Gate\BGII-SoA
-Wrote the new path in the Big World BGII field

Have I done anything wrong/missing something? Should I be worried about the missing files?

Many thanks in advance

I am still d/l BG2, but a couple of items:

1) Per the instruction guide, recommendation for Win 7 is to install the vanilla games in some directory other than Program Folders (e.g. c:\games\...) to work-around the permission issue. You might want to uninstall the vanilla games and then re-install.

2) Suggest you check out this link <http://www.shsforums.net/topic/44661-big-world-project-bwp-v90/> and scroll down to "Step by Step Instructions". There is also a PDF file that contains a lot more detial.

My thought is that if it failed at some higher level because it could not patch the files, you may get some error message like this.
That may or may not be the answer, but am interested to learn what you find out - I will be walking this same path very soon !

I am having a problem also, but mine is that the BWP install batch file is telling me that the TOB 26498 patch is uninstalled. RUH-ROH! And after I install the 26498 patch, it isn't recognized as being installed.

@ SamuraiJackJr

Reinstalling and following the step by step instructions in that link solved my problems.
Putting it in the games folder seems to be what did the trick.

I didn't even have to put the BG2 folder in the BG1 or rewrite part of the ini, now it just works smoothly ^^

Cheers for the help and I hope you both get your games+mods working aswell :P

I need to disable the "TOB Check" part of Big World Setup Install.bat. It's preventing me from beginning the install because it thinks that the TOB 26498 patch is absent. According to my registry, though, that's the version I already have installed. I don't have any idea how to disable TOB Check though. I'm hoping I won't need to ask at SHS Forums, kind of a surly crowd there. Might be my only choice.

Did you start a new game for ToB right after you installed it ?
If you've installed any other patches, etc., suggest you re-install vanilla.
Per the instructions above, I started a new game in BG1, BG2, and ToB - promptly saving and quitting as soon as I could.
I got past the check at that point.

I am getting the same error and I looked in the batch file and found that it is looking for a specific file "BG2-ToBPatchReadMe.txt". I just created a file with that name in the BG2 directory and it continued fine thereafter.

So, does it ask for a cd after installation?

I have the answer to my own question. The TOB Patch 24698 installer just dumps the contents in the root of my C: drive. Copy the files from there to my BGII - SoA folder and hey presto.

And yes, I now need a cd. Thankfully I have one, it just annoys me because I bought the GOG version also.

I have never played Baldur's Gate; 1 or 2.

I am currently downloading the Big World recommended setup. Should I play through the games, normally, once or just attempt to play with this mod?

I'm worried I might run into errors later on in the game if I use this mod compilation...

I figure, I could always download all this stuff and install it later.

At the big world setup remember to tick the box for choosing your own mods.

This way you can choose what you want to put in the game from a very extensive list :P

Personally I'm keeping my first game mostly vanilla for now, avoiding mods that change the balance of the game and focusin on the ones that add extra party members and party banter/relationship mods to make my party very chatty and lively. Also a few mods that adds extra content to the main storyline (the ascension quest mod+homeward bound if i recall)

As you mentioned, we can always install some more ambitious mods later in the game ;)

@weirdboy: Thanks for the report! Do you have to play with a CD, or can you continue with just creating the text file ?

@DuncanVK: Agree with brotherfrank if this is your first run through.
I played a while back and am now going down the "recommended" mod path.
I also chose to add the widescreen mod and "Check the bodies" to check out the new intro in Candlekeep.

@brotherfrank: Once you start a game, am not sure how easy it is to drop in new mod. The whole "re-biff" process looks interesting. If you decide to add a mod later, can you report back what you find ?

Update:

After getting through the entire download / pre-install process, I ran into two issues with "BiG World Install.bat".

1) Received the "TOB 26498 patch is absent" and used weirdboy's solution to resolve
2) Received a "CD5\Movie\25movies.bif is missing" error.

Bottom-line, I updated "BiG World Install.bat".
Found two checks that generate the errors above:
%IF% CD5\movies\25Movies.bif %IF% BG2-ToBPatchReadMe.txt GOTO :TOOLCHCK

Basically, if it finds the files it is looking for, it skips the error messages and goes on; else, it displays the error messages.

To remedy the situation, I changed the line to:
%IF% BG2-ToBPatchReadMe.txt GOTO :TOOLCHCK

Installation proceeded at that point.

NOTE 1
There are a couple of threads that suggest more elegant solutions to the problem.
<http://www.shsforums.net/topic/44196-pls-help-with-bwp-set-up/>
<http://www.shsforums.net/topic/41055-huge-install/>

NOTE 2
Suspect you could further truncate to:
GOTO :TOOLCHCK
This would skip the checks for Throne of Bhaal completely and probably not require creating the dummy "BG2-ToBPatchReadMe.txt" file. This would remove all of the safeguards put in place by the creators of the mod to ensure ToB is properly installed.
I have not tested this.

I'm fairly confident you can drop in new mods in most cases, at least with the ones I had.
Basically Bigworld downloaded the various mods but didn't seem to install them, I only realized this at the copper inn where I should have met various new NPCs.
Only when I checked the BGII folder did I notice loads of exec files which I promplty ran 1 by 1, went back into my game and the new NPCS were there.

Problem doing it that way is that you may break something in the game. some of these mods need to be installed in a certain order for them to work correctly.

Good point. To be used only with simple stand alone mods if Bigworld doesnt do it for you then.