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Game Won't Launch

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Jeremy757
LacunaSerenity
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #26 February 11, 2008 8:24:34 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Yeah I'm using Vista Ultimate 32 and the game would flip to fullscreen mode, then a message would pop up saying is was dumping to a minidump file.

I'm running AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3.0GHz, 2GB DDR800, ATi x1650 Pro and 1.5TB of HD space.

I know I can run the game, but I was hoping for a fix for Vista. :-/
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Jeremy757
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
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Reply #27 February 11, 2008 8:53:09 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
then a message would pop up saying is was dumping to a minidump file.


If you did get a dump, definitely send it in to [email protected]. Dumps are the single most helpful thing for the devs to fix crashes. The location the dumps are stored in is listed in the Technical FAQ stickied thread.
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Jeremy757
tinfoil123
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #28 February 11, 2008 10:15:26 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Just did a clean reinstall of XP. Updated with all the latest drivers from windows update. DirectX still won't run the direct3D test, game still won't run.
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Jeremy757
PringleMan
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #29 February 11, 2008 11:09:13 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I fixed mine some how. I think this is a common problem that is comming from very different sources.

I ran a DXdiag and everything came up positive, so I moved on to some of the other methods that were recommended, such as setting the intro movie to off and running it in windowed mode. The funny thing was, neither of those options were actually located in my settings file.

After that, I decided to just un-install and reinstall. I used the windows uninstall, and manually deleted the program files folder that still had some of the data left over. I re-installed, patched to 1.02, and the game ran! I am interested to see if it fails again later.

Upon reviewing the evidence I have decided that my problem came with the lack of either option in the settings file. I am thinking that the .exe probably went through the settings to try and find what the option for those was, and then went crazy when it could not find them.
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Jeremy757
LacunaSerenity
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #30 February 12, 2008 12:15:26 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I went back and launched the game via "SINS Launcher" instead of launching the exe like most games do, and the game works.

How strange.
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Jeremy757
tinfoil123
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #31 February 12, 2008 12:47:12 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Fixed mine.
Did a clean install of Vista, updated everything but the video drivers, didn't touch those just left them as windows installed them. And the game started right up.
No clue why.
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Jeremy757
Durikkan
Join Date 04/2007
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Reply #32 February 12, 2008 12:55:05 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I had it at first, but then rebooted and it hasn't had a problem since.
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Jeremy757
scionlander
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #33 February 12, 2008 6:05:00 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
had this problem at first. one of the symptoms was a few errors when I installed the game. When I tried to load the game it gave me the customary dump alert that most of us in this post have been getting. I then for the sake of experiment turned on my internet connection uninstalled the game and manually deleted the extra files in the program files directory. I then reinstalled the game then downloaded the patch and it now works fine. a little slow but its better than nothing and what to expect on my computer
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Jeremy757
Jeremy757
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Reply #34 February 12, 2008 8:27:30 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Okay, I'm going to try some of these suggestions when I get home from work. Hopefully it will be successful.
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Jeremy757
ForsakenIshamael
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #35 February 12, 2008 9:28:40 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I didn't have to reinstall XP, I just reverted back to the ATI driver that comes with XP and it works now. If you right click My Computer and go to Properties, Hardware, Device Manager, Display Adapters, Properties, Driver Tab, there's a rollback button. If you've only installed one driver since you've installed XP (as was my case) rolling back will take you back to the XP ATI driver.
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Jeremy757
Jeremy757
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Reply #36 February 12, 2008 8:11:25 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I just reverted back to the ATI driver that comes with XP and it works now.


Well I tried this but it didn't work for me.  ( 

I'm out of ideas and at wits end. I guess I'll just chill and wait and let support do their thing.
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Jeremy757
Lokis_Fire
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #37 February 12, 2008 10:01:14 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I haven't posted before...but I have the same trouble of the game dumping within 10 seconds of trying to start.

My system is:

Pentium 4 2.93 GHz
Audigy SE sound
Radeon 9800 Pro video

I have gone back and forth with support several times already, got the new exe and I have sent them several dump files. I have reinstalled the game four times and I have gone through that list of stuff to do one by one and did it all. Still no dice.

I loaded it on my girlfriend's laptop and it started right up.

I hope they are able to fix it soon.
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Jeremy757
ForsakenIshamael
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #38 February 13, 2008 11:23:04 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Jeremy: Are you sure you rolled back to the XP ATI driver? You may have just reverted to an older driver you've installed. Once you're to the Driver tab section and you've reverted to an older driver, it should say at the top Microsoft Corporation (or something similar, not on my home computer atm). If it doesn't you may not have gone all the way back to the first driver that came with XP. I don't know if you can go back more than one level or not, I've never tried. If you can't the display driver you need will probably be on your XP CD. If you can't find it I can help when I get home.
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Jeremy757
Hollow Man
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #39 February 13, 2008 11:50:39 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
You can also just keep trying older ATI drivers until you find one that works. A few weeks ago a friend of mine was trying to get his PC running games properly on an HD TV, with an ATI 9800 era card, and with the latest few drivers games and DXDiag would give errors. It took a while to troubleshoot, but eventually we discovered using a much older driver (it may have been whatever one Windows gets on there with the updated Windows patches and hotfixes, but it's hard to remember) did the trick. This was all under WinXP.

The key was that DXDiag tests would fail. For those having problems of that nature, try older drivers.

-HM
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Jeremy757
Jeremy757
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #40 February 13, 2008 12:51:02 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Jeremy: Are you sure you rolled back to the XP ATI driver? You may have just reverted to an older driver you've installed.


It let me press the roll back button a couple of times before a help window with a trouble shooting guide popped up. It wouldn't let me do it again. But a couple of days ago after I posted this thread, I had completely uninstalled the video drivers and rebooted and let windows pick the drivers, but that didn't solve the problem either. Unfortunatly my computer didn't come with an XP cd, just a Restore CD that wipes the hard drive and reloads windows. I think I will wait for support before resorting to that drastic measure.

Speaking of support they contacted me again with some new instructions on what exactly to do to get it started. I followed their steps precisely and it only resulted in the game not starting at all. No screen going black or dump file, just a windows hour glass appearing for a few seconds and then disappearing. I included in an email to them all the exact steps I took and all the setting changes I made in settings.user.

They also gave me instructions on how to generate a .txt file in DOS cmd that would show them how the game was installed.

1. start->run->cmd
2. cd C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\
3. type "dir /s *.* > sins.txt

Strangely C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\ doesn't exist on my computer. So I sent them files of C:\Program Files\Stardock Games and C:\Program Files\Stardock. I also sent them a new dxdiag report and a copy of my settings.user file and the info about my Direct3D Test failures.

Hopefully this will be enough to help them figure it out.

My fingers are crossed.


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Jeremy757
Hollow Man
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #41 February 13, 2008 1:08:30 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
If you're still getting test failures via dxdiag, then Sins (and most other games) won't run. For my friend it was a driver issue, and he eventually found one that did the trick. The key is to fix the test issues, and then the game will undoubtedly run.

The hard part is figuring out why dxdiag tests are failing, and it may be the video driver. Do you have the driver disc that came with the video card? If so, try uninstalling the current driver, installing the one on the disc, then running the dxdiag tests.

-HM
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Jeremy757
Jeremy757
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #42 February 13, 2008 1:58:46 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
If you're still getting test failures via dxdiag, then Sins (and most other games) won't run. For my friend it was a driver issue, and he eventually found one that did the trick. The key is to fix the test issues, and then the game will undoubtedly run.

The hard part is figuring out why dxdiag tests are failing, and it may be the video driver. Do you have the driver disc that came with the video card? If so, try uninstalling the current driver, installing the one on the disc, then running the dxdiag tests.

-HM


thats a good idea. strangly enough though I don't have any problem running City of Heroes on my computer, never have.
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Jeremy757
Hollow Man
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #43 February 13, 2008 2:06:14 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Which is why I said "most other games". I assume City of Heroes must not use whatever calls are messing up DirectX.

It took us 24 hours (working lots of those hours on the problem) to figure out our issue was a driver issue. We tried the newest drivers, we tried mostly current ones, we tried installing Windows to a different partition, we found instructions on how uninstall and reinstall DirectX...all kinds of things. It took quite a lot of patience before it came down to realizing it was the video driver.

Basically, what we discovered was that a clean install of Windows, then DirectX, did the trick. Once we put on the newest ATI driver...pow, the dxdiag tests would error out.

Try your original video driver disk first and see if that does it.

If not, if you have a spare partition, try reinstalling Windows, patch your Windows, then put the newest version of DirectX on, then run dxdiag, and see what happens. You might have to resort to this if for some awful reason you can't completely clean out the latest driver (assuming that is the problem).

It's times like this that I really hate Windows. I mean I hate it normally, but REALLY...

-HM
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Jeremy757
Jeremy757
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #44 February 13, 2008 9:40:29 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
< happy dance>HAPPY, HAPPY, JOY, JOY< /happy dance>

I GOT IT TO WORK!!! YEE HAA!!!

So I took Hallow Man's advice. I went into the driver properties and instead of rolling back, this time I told it to uninstall. Reboot. I then took the original Catalyst cd that came with my video card and loaded the drivers from there. That rolled the drivers back to version 6.

I then started the game with the test build .exe file that support gave me and voila, it start right up intro movie and everything.

Incidently the Direct 3D Test now passes.

So now does this game have interseller pubs, I need a drink.
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Jeremy757
Hollow Man
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #45 February 13, 2008 10:33:17 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I'm glad someone else was able to profit a bit from the misery I endured trying to figure out why the dxdiag didn't work. Now someone just needs to figure out exactly WHY the latest Catalyst drivers breaks certain ATI cards.

-HM
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