"Sins of a Solar Empire has stopped working"

Microsoft windows pops up with this error when I hit "Play the Game"

from Sins Forums
I got this game yesterday and played it all night without any problems, then I played a 2 hour game this morning and everything was working great. I went online, made an account and everything just fine, I couldn't host though. I exited the game and was going to restart when I noticed a McAfee message pertaining to Sins' internet ussage being blocked, which is probably why I couldn't host. I had already started the restart though and was unable to click "Grant access" before everything shut down. When I got back to the desktop, I found that I was completely unable to get into the game at all.

Double clicking on the shorcut brings up the launcher, but after hitting "Play the Game" it immediantly comes up with a "Microsoft Windows" box that says "Sins of a Solar Empire has stopped working. Checking for solution to your problem." A few seconds after that the box changes and says "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly, Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available." Then I have to hit a "Close Program" button to get out of the box.

I went to control panel and hit uninstall, then did a Repair. It went along, I assume re-installing the game, and at the end when I hit "Finish" came up with the exact same error. I'm a bit baffled as to why the game would be working so fine just an hour ago, and now it won't even get to the opening movie cutscene. Could that be it actually? I do remember checking an option box to disable to opening cutscene. Unfortunatly if I am unable to get into the game, I can not un-check this option and see if the problem goes away...

So what can I do? I have to go to work now, but latter I'm going to completely uninstall the whole thing(not like I have any saves or anything) and re-install it instead of just doing a repair. If there is an easier way though, I'd be glad to hear it.
technical
5,779 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I'd give it a try with re-installing it entirely first.

Have you changed anything in your driver installations after the game started crashing, or changed anything in your setup at all?

You might also want to update your drivers, to ensure that it's not anything from that being a problem, although that is unlikely as you say it worked fine before.

You could try to exit McAfee entirely before starting the game to see if that works.

A couple of things to try, at least. Good luck!
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Are you using an Nvidia graphics card? Based on what I'm reading, I can almost gues you are. Check your other games. Sometimes your video drivers will get corrupted affecting all Direct3D games. Go to dxdiag and test Direct3D. If it gives you the same error, your drivers are corrupted. Uninstall the drivers and delete the Nvidia folder to ensure everything is gone and reinstall the card/drivers.

I experienced a very similar problem recently, but it wasn't only with Sins, it was anything using Direct3D.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Re-installing completely fixed it, if the issue returns I'll begin messing with the other issues. I do use a Nvidia card, the Nvidia Geforce Go 7900GS. I really don't want to mess with the drivers though. I did that when I first got this laptop(its my new one) and it messed everything up, none of my old games would work. Nvidia hadn't released any drivers for the card that were compatiable with Vista, so I had to try thirdparty ones and drivers from other cards/xp, finally I think I found some dell ones which worked.

Everything seems to be working again now, I'll see how long it makes it or if the problem returns. Now the only problem I'm getting is when I go to host a multiplayer game it comes up saying "Most players will not be able to join your games." Even after I made myself the DMZ host. Immediantly after that someone joined the game so I think the error is poping up needlessly.