Hanging on startup

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by Ref, Jul 6, 2009.

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  1. Ref

    Ref Member

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    Firstly I must commend the modding community for keeping this fantastic game alive!!
    Thanks to all the modders and contributors for all your hard work and dedication!

    I searched for this particular issue and came up with nothing so I'm hoping I can get some help here.

    I'm running a retail version of TOEE modded to 5.5.0 with TFE-2.1 on an XP SP3 system AVG free antivirus.

    The issue I'm encountering is when the game loads at the initial splash screen it indicates it is:

    Loading protos (clearing old...)

    and it hangs there and doesn't respond. When I access task manager to kill the application it shows the task as not responding. I can literally let it sit there on the splash screen for a half hour and nothing happens.

    Has this been documented or encountered yet? Any advice on what I should do?

    Thanks!!
     
    Ref, Jul 6, 2009
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  2. vampiricpuppy

    vampiricpuppy cuddly nosferatu

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    I had an issue with bluescreening at about that point, until i installed the no-cd, but i'm on a vista system.
     
    vampiricpuppy, Jul 6, 2009
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  3. Ref

    Ref Member

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    Nope, no blue screen on my side...Not using the no cd patch either.
     
    Ref, Jul 6, 2009
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  4. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Did you allow the module to fully activate? (Did you see a confirmation window when it was done?) It sounds like your protos.tab might be bad, although usually that doesn't result in a hang but a sudden CTD. If you don't allow a module to activate fully, you can conceivably have a hodge-podge of different components from different modules, which could conceivably cause the type of error you describe ... which is why we urge players in the mod docs to be sure to allow activations to complete.

    So you may want to uninstall/reinstall. Otherwise, try a no-cd.
     
    Gaear, Jul 6, 2009
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  5. Ref

    Ref Member

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    I've been very happily playing this for quite sometime. My characters are in the lvl 8-10 range and have just finished Hickory Branch.

    Can you tell me which files I should save to ensure my saved games won't get wiped out if/when I have to reload the program?

    I believe the hang may occur because I have Visual Studio on my pc as I am learning to program in C#. Additionally protos.tab does shows it has not been altered since 11-23-08.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2009
    Ref, Jul 7, 2009
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  6. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    If you want to save your games independant of the front end utility that does that, copy the ToEE/modules/save folder to somewhere apart from your root directory.

    As for the hang, I agree that if the game worked once but doesn't work now, it's probably due to some change in your system.
     
    Gaear, Jul 7, 2009
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  7. Ref

    Ref Member

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    Thats the screwey thing...Nothing changed in my system. No update, no loading of new software, nothing....

    I'll back up my save games. Do I need to save the contents of the players folder as well, or anything else for that matter?

    Before I blow away my current install of TOEE and the 5.5.0 mod I'd like to ensure the fact that I can reinsert this data back into the reloaded environment and start playing again.
     
    Ref, Jul 8, 2009
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  8. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Yeah, save the players folder if you want to save your PCs. Old saves and PCs should work with a fresh install provided the saves aren't corrupt somehow and all your settings are the same. And that you're playing the same module of course.
     
    Gaear, Jul 8, 2009
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  9. Ref

    Ref Member

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    ***Update***

    So, I had taken the CD out of the drive to play another game while I was having issues with TOEE.

    I put it back in to prepare for deleting and reloading and I thought....why not try again and lo and behold it works properly now....

    Wierd...
     
    Ref, Jul 9, 2009
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  10. transient

    transient Member

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    First of all I'd like to second the topic-starter and express my sincere gratitude to the community for the immense amount of work and dedication that came into Co8 mod! Taking my hat off :)

    Now, it might not be the best way to introduce myself on the forums but I'm experiencing exactly the same problem Ref described. When I try to start the modpack (5.8.1) via TFE-X the game launches, shows logo videos and then crashes during startup sequence. The last thing I see is "Loading protos (clearing old)..." under the progress bar.

    There's another curious anomaly - I'm able to start and play the original Troika module via TFE-X, but when I just fire up ToEE executable (bypassing the front-end) the aforementioned problem persists.. I've tried both NC and vanilla modpacks to no avail. And yes, the front-end reported successful conversion (first-time) and activation of both of them.

    At first I thought it might be another quirk of Win7 64 and tried various compatibility modes, but Ref mentioned he was running XP! Neither does this crash pertain to no-cd I'm using since the game actually works under specific conditions. I've also tried disabling each and every non-critical process.. Without success :(

    So any ideas what can be causing this? TIA
     
    transient, Jul 12, 2010
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  11. transient

    transient Member

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    Okay, I narrowed down the problem a bit. Did a fresh install of ToEE (up to off. patch 2), held my breath and started the program. It works! Tampered with some in-game and system options, but didn't manage to reproduce the obnoxious crash. So far so good..

    Launched the front-end, went through the whole convert/activate procedure and here we go again! :E The program steadily terminates upon reaching "Loading protos (clearing old)..." stage. Which leads me to believe there's something wrong either with TFE-X or the current modpack. OTOH Ref reported this problem with 5.5.0 bundle..

    I'm starting to get desperate here. Could anybody please share some insights on the matter??
     
    transient, Jul 12, 2010
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  12. Necroticpus

    Necroticpus Cthulhu Ftaghn!

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    Maybe your resolution is not supported. I'm just guessing here but I've seen a lot of other threads about this same thing and it always comes down to these things...

    run as administrator

    use a no-cd crack

    unsupported resolution

    Ask Gaear or Ted to be sure but I'd bet anything it's one of those.
     
    Necroticpus, Jul 12, 2010
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  13. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Aye, also you may want to try disabling movies (the 'disable intro' button in TFE-X), because the videos are played in a different resolution that your monitor may not support. (This has emerged as an issue with the advent of widescreen high-res monitors in every home.)

    You may also want to download the latest version of the BINK video drivers (RAD Video Tools): http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm. This was observed to be an issue (sometimes) starting with Vista.

    After that, check that your anti-aliasing settings for your video card are set to 'application controlled.'

    After that, try disabling your anti-virus software and see if that has any effect.
     
    Gaear, Jul 12, 2010
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  14. transient

    transient Member

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    The problem has been sorted out!! Kudos to Gaear for tipping me in right direction. ;) Anti-virus was the culprit. Or more precisely, a combination of a no-cd and anti-virus.

    I'm using (was using..) free Comodo Antivirus which treated unprotected patch 2 executable as a false positive. I added it to exclusions AND disabled the anti-virus. It didn't occur to me that a kernel mode anti-virus driver would still mess with it regardless of my countermeasures. So I had to uninstall the program to prevent it from usurping system memory. :)

    As for your suggestion to manually upgrade Bink (or Miles, or Python, or else) run-times, with all due respect I'd advise against it. Different versions of the same library are likely to have varying entry points, so a linking program will simply fail to call necessary functions. Here's a quote from Bink FAQ:

    Off to enjoy refined ToEE. :) I used to play it back in the days and I do remember some showstopping bugs Troika devs left unresolved.. Hail to all the hardcore fans who polished this little gem!
     
    transient, Jul 13, 2010
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  15. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Heh, I had wondered if Rad Video even contained the Bink codec ... however, there have been quite a few documented cases on these boards where installing the latest version of Rad Video suddenly and magically made ToEE start working for Vista users. The truth is likely in the middle somewhere (where it always is).

    btw, the recommendation given on this end is not to replace any .dlls (we have enough experience with people playing mix and match with our mods here to know that's never sound advice), but to simply install the latest version of a software package.

    Glad you got it working, at any rate. :thumbsup:
     
    Gaear, Jul 13, 2010
    #15
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