Possible connection between win2000 not booting and EU2?

[ForzaA]

I'll admit that my new PC ("new" is february here) has been a problem all the time, but as far as I can tell, the only constants are 1) the hardware (or most of it) which has been checked, double checked, triple checked by the company AND 2) the instalation of EU2.

Ofcourse, I find it more likely that there IS a hardware malfunction somewhere, however, the company is convinced that the problem is indeed with EU2. Which isn't really strange for them to think, as the PC works fine when they reinstall win2k there, and check the PC for a while (days to weeks) and I manage to get it not to start EVERY time.

The question is, has there been ANY report of EU2 causing windows (win2k) to not boot any longer? [search turned up nothing, but someone might remember]
If there are such reports, what was the solutions, and if there weren't, would someone know of any proof that EU2 is NOT the cause?

 

[AndrewT]

EU2 makes no changes to the OS. No, no-one at all has ever reported this, and I cannot see what possible connection there could be. It runs on win9x, win2000, and XP just fine in general.

I'd love to hear their explanation of how it could do anything to the boot process.

You could use an app that records the state of win2000 before EU2 was installed, have the problem occur, then revert to the pre-EU2 state and show the problem still happening. I suspect that EU2 is exercising the hard disk, video or memory in a way their tests are not (software tests of hardware are essentially useless IMO).

Have they actually swapped out any hardware? What are the symptoms - does it just BANG stop booting after working fine, or deteriorate in some way?

Have you or they done a thorough check for viruses, trojans, and worms? Use at least two different apps for this purpose.

And pardon me for asking, but are you 100% sure your EU2 CD is legit? If someone's given you a pirate copy it may be infected itself.

What are the specs of the machine?

 

[ForzaA]

Have they actually swapped out any hardware?

AFAIK they replaced the HD with a new one, don't know if they swapped (if only for testing) any other hardware

What are the symptoms - does it just BANG stop booting after working fine, or deteriorate in some way?

Got it back from repairs on Friday, installed EU2,Norton AV,Adaware rebooted when requested etc. etc. shut down the PC after a bit of gaming.
Attempt to boot next day, fails.
No deterioration of any kind spotted

Have you or they done a thorough check for viruses, trojans, and worms? Use at least two different apps for this purpose.

Checked, not double checked, this last time.
Also quite well protected/checked the times before.
Although I would find it quite curious that I would have a virus each and every time, after the HD is formatted (or a new one placed)

And pardon me for asking, but are you 100% sure your EU2 CD is legit? If someone's given you a pirate copy it may be infected itself.

Sure as can be, that is, bought it from a respectable store, in a box/casing/... that looks legit, CD looks legit, I even have the ever-so-usefull manual
Ubisoft Dutch edition (english game/CD, Dutch manual)

What are the specs of the machine?

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Seagate baracuda 80GB harddisk (originally, and new)
2x 512mb Dane-Elec PC3200 400 Mhz (originally Twinmos dual channel 1024Mb PC3200 400 Mhz)
MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R
..and some other stuff (Could post picture of original order, which has the Twinmos still)

 

[kurtbrian]

try reinstalling again and this time don't install euii, but all the other usual programs and games.

I asume you have upgraded your windows as much as possible as well as your sound card drivers and your graphics card drivers.

If the computer still crashes after reboot you know that it isn't euii that is casuing the problem.

You also try to check your RAM with this little program - you need a floppy to run it.

 

[ForzaA]

try reinstalling again and this time don't install euii, but all the other usual programs and games.

problem is, up until now the crashes were NOT the boot after I installed any specific program (I kept lists).. which would mean I can basically NEVER install EU2

I asume you have upgraded your windows as much as possible as well as your sound card drivers and your graphics card drivers.

indeed

You also try to check your RAM with this little program - you need a floppy to run it.

I would *hope* that a computer store with ~20 nerds in the back room knows either this program, or a better alternative

 

[kurtbrian]

yes, but it never hurts to check anyway

 

[Castellon]

Please run a DirectX Diagnostic:
Start menu –Run - then type Dxdiag, then select each tab across the top of the window, and run the tests on each tab. Then select “Save All Information” button in the lower right of the window. This will bring up a dialog box to allow you to select a name for the file where the information will be saved. You can save it right on the desktop as this will make it easy to find. Then copy the contents of that file from the start to the heading that says “DirectX components” then paste what you have copied into a post in this thread.

 

[jpd]

If it was my machine, I would disable/throw out that Norton Antivirus thingy. I have seen it totally screw up our customer's PC's. Although it didn't exactly cause reboot failures, it did manage to totally corrupt the database and index tables of the database application from our company, which these customers use. Who knows what it corrupted on your machine.

Jan Peter

 

[ForzaA]

Please run a DirectX Diagnostic:
Start menu –Run - then type Dxdiag, then select each tab across the top of the window, and run the tests on each tab. Then select “Save All Information” button in the lower right of the window. This will bring up a dialog box to allow you to select a name for the file where the information will be saved. You can save it right on the desktop as this will make it easy to find. Then copy the contents of that file from the start to the heading that says “DirectX components” then paste what you have copied into a post in this thread.

currently am at the shop.. Win XP has now been installed instead of win2k.. is it still usefull?

 

[ForzaA]

UPDATE:

After 5 months, win2000 suddenly is NOT meant for games AND has trouble with a 64bit processor, I wonder why that was not a problem all the other times it was in repair.
However, installing EU2 DOES cause the problem to surface; clean install of win2k, updates drivers etc. shut down and reboot works fine. install EU2+1.08 patch, play for a bit, stop playing, shut down and reboot doesn't work....

 

[AndrewT]

In what way does it not boot? What happens exactly?

 

[ForzaA]

varies, have had several Blue-Screen crashes during Windows boot (ie. it seems to be loading fine, and halfway *poof* blue screen of death)
And another "version" is (or was) that during load a few error messages (white on black) pop up and dissapear almost instantly...

 

[Castellon]

Could you boot from a disk drive or CD drive and look at the boot log?

And yes DxDiag in XP is still valid if you are still having trouble.

 

[ForzaA]

problem is, winXP doesn't (yet?) display the problem, and the HD was formatted after the last crash, so I don't have much information ATM, unless it starts to crash on winXP aswell...

 

[jpd]

UPDATE:

After 5 months, win2000 suddenly is NOT meant for games AND has trouble with a 64bit processor, I wonder why that was not a problem all the other times it was in repair.
However, installing EU2 DOES cause the problem to surface; clean install of win2k, updates drivers etc. shut down and reboot works fine. install EU2+1.08 patch, play for a bit, stop playing, shut down and reboot doesn't work....

The only thing I can think of here that matches your above symptoms is this:

The EU2 installation procedure probably tries to install one or more DLL's into the system directory. More specifically, the files OLEAUT32.DLL, OLEPRO32.DLL and Msvbvm60.dll, which are needed for the EU2_settings program. Especially those OLE automation files are locked when Windows is up and running, so the setup program creates entries for them in the WININIT file. This file contains installation instructions for normally locked files, and are executed by Windows as one of the first actions after a reboot, even before the kernel itself becomes active. In Win9x installations, this phase is recognizable by two lines on screen:

Windows is updating your installation. This can take several minutes

Done updating. Windows will continue to load

Maybe the versions of the OLE automation files EU2 tries to install/copy are not compatible with your Win2K/processor combination, and crashes the system as soon as these OLE automation DLL's become active, which is somewhere halfway through the boot process. Amongst other things, these files regulate execution of script files and inter application communication, and as such from the core of COM.

I know for a fact that setup screwed up big time on my Win98 installation where it comes to handling these OLE automation files. I had to manually download the correct versions after EU2 setup screwed them up, boot into MS-DOS mode, copy the correct files over the incorrect ones in Windows\SYSTEM, and then reboot.

If you are up to it, try reinstalling your Win2K on your 64 Bit Athlon (assuming it's an Athlon64 ), but DO NOT install EU2 from the CD. Instead, hook up through a LAN connection to another PC with EU2 installed, copy it over to your new PC, and use the Windows Explorer to simply create a shortcut to EU2.EXE and start it up. Or, if you currently have your game already installed on drive D: E: or whatever, simply reinstall Win2K and DirectX, and directly start up EU2 from it's currently installed location.

If you can play the game this way and reboot after playing without any troubles, then the problem is simply that the EU2 installer replaces the correct OLE automation DLL's for incorrect ones.

EDIT: As for the incompatibility itself causing boot failures, that may very well have something to do with this:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/25759.pdf
of which a short version can be found here:
http://www.theregister.com/2004/06/22/amd_opteron_glitches/

Jan Peter

 

[ForzaA]

EDIT: As for the incompatibility itself causing boot failures, that may very well have something to do with this:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/25759.pdf
of which a short version can be found here:
http://www.theregister.com/2004/06/22/amd_opteron_glitches/

Jan Peter

ehm, could you translate that into "normal" English? I'm clueless :wacko:

Anyway, the problem will *most likely* be circumvented by installing winXP instead of win2000, although the shop is currently *somewhat* reluctant to give me my money back for win2000

 

[jpd]

That is pure background reference material, for someone who is knowledgeable and interested enough, and who exactly wants to know what goes wrong.

It's enough to know that a certain combination of machine code instructions can cause data corruption or the execution of the wrong machine code instructions (which in turn can also cause data corruption), when used on the specified Athlon 64 processor models/revisions.

Jan Peter

 

[Castellon]

Sticky with the XP and in future buy only Intel stuff.

 

[jpd]

Sticky with the XP and in future buy only Intel stuff.

Well, unfortunately that won't prevent problems 100% either. Pentium FDIV flaw, Intel Memory Translation Hub data corruption anyone?

Face it. Silicon has become so complex that each chip design has flaws, just as each piece of software has them. Most of the time you will never notice these, because they are detected in time, and work arounds are put in place, both in the various compilers and through BIOS firmware updates. To this day, my C++ compiler has a switch to instruct it to work around the Pentium FDIV bug.

It's just never wise to become a first-generation-new-hardware early adopter. Wait one or two hardware generations, and buy a systems once the flaws have been found and fixed.

Jan Peter

 

[Castellon]

No one said the bleeding edge was, well, bloodless.