Game crashes immediately when run

[pettik]

Hi, I just hit a nasty snag with the game. I'm using the newest patch 1.3 and windows vista home pro.
I noticed when I installed the game maybe a week ago that when run from the desktop icon the game would crash. The play/upgrade/register etc. would come up, but as soon as I click "start rome" the game crashes. I thought this was strange, since when I ran the game by inserting the game disc and hit start rome there everything was fine.
Today this trick stopped working as well, no matter which way I do this I always get an instant crash.
I get the same kind of crash also when there is no disc inserted.

I really have not done anything to the PC between the tries (laptop, no changed hardware).
Any advice would be great, since the game is wonderful and I'm a bit addicted..

Vista dumps the following information:
"
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: RomeGame.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 48a19fbc
Fault Module Name: StackHash_fd00
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 41545045
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1035
Additional Information 1: fd00
Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
Additional Information 3: fd00
Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
"

 

[AndrewT]

Please run DXDIAG, Save All Info, and post dxdiag.txt here (first delete everything after the Sound Devices section so it will fit). Also post your Rome/settings.txt and Rome/logs/system.log files. Note that if you use Vista and have installed the game in the suggested folder c:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Rome\, the active versions of these last two files will have been redirected by Vista to a non-system directory, like c:\users\[name]\appdata\local\virtualstore\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Rome\. You may have to search your C: drive for them.

 

[pettik]

Solved?

Hi, sorry I can't get the logs anymore. I noticed that all the logs bar one were created during startup but they were empty.
I noticed that my settings.txt was completely empty, which was funny, maybe that would cause the crash?
Anyways I did a uninstall, reinstall plus the 1.3 update and now the game works again, the settings.txt also has stuff in it now.

Maybe the settings save somehow screwed up and emptied the file?