SP2 and Doom 3 and Farcry

[freshie]

So this past weekend, I bit the bullet and upgraded to XP SP2. I hate it. Like Microsoft's idea of security is to be intrusively annoying and remind you every time you login that you don't have virus protection nor automatic updates turned on.

Thanks guys. *Thumbs up Redmond*

So somehwere after installing SP2, and after installing a trial version of FProtect AV software, and having to turn off every stinking service I could find, so that MY anti-virus program wouldn't spawn 8 different programs, I decided to try out DOOM 3 again.

Except it immediately crashes, giving me that oh-so friendly Microsoft warning, "DOOM 3, had to unexpectedly terminate, send details to Microsoft?"

I later tried Farcry, and the same thing happened.

No problems with some other games Like UT2004, City Of Heroes, and Tron 2.0.

And honestly since CoH is working, i'm hardly perturbed by this. But still, one day soon, I'd be interested in perhaps making it to Alpha Labs level 3...

[Salyavin]

So somehwere after installing SP2, and after installing a trial version of FProtect AV software, and having to turn off every stinking service I could find, so that MY anti-virus program wouldn't spawn 8 different programs, I decided to try out DOOM 3 again.Some of those services are necessary. Turning them off may have caused your problem. You can check here: http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm to see what those services do and whether or not you need them turned on.

Except it immediately crashes, giving me that oh-so friendly Microsoft warning, "DOOM 3, had to unexpectedly terminate, send details to Microsoft?"

I later tried Farcry, and the same thing happened.

No problems with some other games Like UT2004, City Of Heroes, and Tron 2.0..Hmm. UT2004 is DirectX 8 and I'm pretty sure Tron 2.0 is as well. Doom3 and Far Cry are DirectX 9. Windows SP2 installs DirectX 9.0c, so something there might be messed up.

Try running 'dxdiag.exe' (from Start | Run) and select the DirectX Files tab. It should tell you if any files are bad or out of date. (You might get out-of-date files if you installed DirectX 8 from a game install disc after installing SP2 w/DirectX 9, although most installers will warn you not to do that.)

You should be able to fix a bad DirectX install by downloading and installing the DirectX 9.0c Runtime or the DirectX 9.0c Redist from http://www.microsoft.com/directx.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[freshie]

I looked at DxDiag and initial inspection seemed fine. I ran a few of the tests, but might not have run through all of them.

Certainly I'll give the DX re-install a shot and se if that helps.

City of Heroes is DirectX 9 though.

[freshie]

I downloaded the DirectX distribution. Exits without installing anything. It believes that DX 9.0c is installed correctly.

Anybody got a good 9.0c directx uninstaller?

[Salyavin]

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to allow DirectX to be uninstalled. You can uninstall the entire SP2 but that's a bit too drastic. There are 3rd party DirectX uninstaller hacks based on "knowing" each file revision and registry change, but I wouldn't trust them for Dx9.0c because I doubt they've had enough time to be updated and tested sufficiently.

However, you should be able to force an overinstall if you get the DirectX 9.0c Redist instead of the Runtime. The Runtime installer is only a few Kb and downloads files as needed while the Redist is the whole 200+ MB package.

[freshie]

Redistributable exits without installing anything either. I think I have to something particullarly nasty to force re-install.

Think I'm going to just re-install the programs first.

[freshie]

I've mix and matched alot of the different components.

Direct X 9.0b and DirectX 9.0c
XP SP1 and XP SP2
NVIDIA 61.77 and 66.72 drivers

No combination of these different components will make Doom 3 or Farcry run. Still get an error saying that the application exited.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Doom 3. Still get the problem.



Question: I recall seeing the windows updater ask me about updating my OpenGL software when going to Update 2... Was I hallucinating? I think I might have selected no, but cannot get the installer that option now...

[SoBeiT]

After a few days of installing SP2 I had a lot of problems, mostly not allowing me to play older games.
Normal things like mail, icq and Pogo stopped working or were asking over & over again to be allowed (even as I was reading my mail).

So a "repair" was done. It got rid of service pack SP2.


I am going to do my first reformat (with supervision :D ) soon and reinstall SP2. I'm betting something was wrong (but hidden) before SP2 was installed.

I can always reformat again, once I've been through it :smirk:

*I hope*

[Salyavin]

I've mix and matched alot of the different components.

Direct X 9.0b and DirectX 9.0c
XP SP1 and XP SP2
NVIDIA 61.77 and 66.72 drivers

No combination of these different components will make Doom 3 or Farcry run. Still get an error saying that the application exited.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Doom 3. Still get the problem.Are you deleting the game directory and doing a clean install of the game? If there are config files left behind those may be the source of the problem. That's the problem I always have with BF:V; every patch resets the config files and removes my AllowAllRefreshRates setting. I have the refresh override set to 75Hz in the NVidia drivers. Without AllowAllRefreshRates set to 1, when the game tries to start up at 75Hz instead of 60Hz it just crashes.

Try the other usual suspects too: drop the sound acceleration back a notch or disable sound to see if it's your sound drivers, kill background processes to see if they're interfering, turn off your antivirus (may need to uninstall it completely...some of them leave a lot of services running), disable the Windows firewall (temporarily), etc.

As for your mix and match of different Windows components, if you're just using Add/Remove Programs to install and uninstall them, the install scripts may be missing the thing that's causing the problem. Things like timestamp checks or file locks will often cause files or registry settings not to be updated or restored by the script, and if there's no error checking it'll look like it succeeded I had a problem like that in the one install script I wrote... there were no symptoms and everything appeared to work fine, but when I did a by-hand comparison of every file by size and date I found a couple of things that were missed. Unless you're really familiar with an install package, sometimes the only way to fix a problem is a with a clean install of Windows.

In fact, that's how most install scripts are tested: on a clean copy of Windows restored from a Ghost image. And that's why tech support often says to do that when they run out of ideas... they don't know what the problem is and it's faster for the user to do that than for them to assign developer resources to reproduce, find, and fix the bug in their script. Sucks, I know.

Question: I recall seeing the windows updater ask me about updating my OpenGL software when going to Update 2... Was I hallucinating? I think I might have selected no, but cannot get the installer that option now...I don't think MS is doing anything with OpenGL as it competes with Direct3D. However they did recently change Windows Update. You can see if there are any non-critical updates by selecting the Custom rather than the Express install option and then looking under optional updates.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[freshie]

Yes, I merely uninstalled SP2 from the Add/Remove control panel. This was probably hampered by the fact, that I installed SP2 twice.

When I reinstalled Doom 3, I removed the directory entirely and started from scratch.

I uninstalled the NVIDIA drivers from the control panel.

DirectX versions were changed by using a utility called DirectX extractor. I know quality on these things aren't always the greatest.


Getting mentally prepared to fdisk my system, and to do a clean install. bleh.

[freshie]

So in preparation of the rebuild I uninstalled some stuff like FarCry and some other random stuff. Suddenly Doom 3 was working again.

Weird. Still going to do the rebuild. Dual boot some Linux

[Salyavin]

So in preparation of the rebuild I uninstalled some stuff like FarCry and some other random stuff. Suddenly Doom 3 was working again.

Weird.Weird is right. It was probably some of the "random stuff" as game installs are usually pretty self-contained aside from DirectX. Or it might have been dueling copy protections...

Still going to do the rebuild. Dual boot some LinuxIf you're new to Linux I strongly suggest avoiding dual-boot. Try a Knoppix or SuSE LiveCD instead. A LiveCD runs Linux off a CD without needing to do an install to the hard disk.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[freshie]

If you're new to Linux I strongly suggest avoiding dual-boot. Try a Knoppix or SuSE LiveCD instead. A LiveCD runs Linux off a CD without needing to do an install to the hard disk.

Cheers,
Salyavin

You mean using a CD to boot into a linux partition? I want to brush up on my multi-threading programming skills at home, so I'd like a chunk of diskspace reserved for a linux partition for a development environment.

I have tons of Solaris experience. Less so with Linux.

What is the downside to a boot manager which allows me to select an OS at boot time?

[Salyavin]

You mean using a CD to boot into a linux partition? I want to brush up on my multi-threading programming skills at home, so I'd like a chunk of diskspace reserved for a linux partition for a development environment.Ah, if you want a development environment then yes, you definitely want disk space. The LiveCDs are good if you just want to try out Linux as they don't use the hard disk; they run off the CD and in RAM. But for a dev system you need storage for source and objects and a RAM drive won't cut it.

What is the downside to a boot manager which allows me to select an OS at boot time?Once you get everything configured with GRUB it should be okay, but getting there is a pain as Windows' bootloader doesn't like to share. Also, WinXP likes to mark every partition in the system, even those with file systems it doesn't recognize (like ext2 and ext3). It can screw up partitions for Linux (or at least it used to). You may be stuck using FAT32 for all your partitions.

Get a dual-boot HOWTO and read it carefully before installing anything. Make sure it's reasonably up-to-date, i.e. it mentions Windows XP and GRUB. Also, depending on which Linux distro you choose, the install guide may have more specific instructions on setting up a dual-boot with that distro.

Cheers,
Salyavin