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Stonewall

Stonewall

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Hello, all of my save games, no matter what version of EU2 I run, CTD immediately after beginning them. This occures from an in-game load, a start menu load, and a load immediately after booting EU2. I have tried reinstalling EU2, updating drivers, disabling antivirus stuff. They crash in 1.06, the AGC 2.3 and EEP 1.3.1. No matter what I run, all of my save games crash. Any thoughts or suggestions?
 
A couple questions first...

- Are these old save games that won't load or new saves too?

- When exactly does it crash? Do you get any error messages?

- Are you able to start a new game?

- If so, is it only manual saves that won't subsequently load or do autosaves have the same problem?

- Which publisher version are you using? (Strategy First/Ubi/Vision/etc.)

- Are you running the game from an "unusual" drive (i.e. something other than C:\ or D:\)

- Can you give me detailed system specs please (all components and driver versions being run). OS? DirectX version? Etc.....

Let's start with that for now.
 
I am running Strategy First 1.06...just got the game, never used any other patches.

None of the saves will load, manual or autosave.

The save game loads and then about 1 or 2 days into it it stops and crashes to desktop....no error message.

I was running from D:, thought that might be a problem and switched to C: and they still crash.

Starting new games is fine, they run perfectly, I just can't reload them once I quit.

I am running a P3 800 Win98SE with 128mb of RAM. Just downloaded and installed DirectX 8.1 I have an NVidia GeForce 2 video card with the latest drivers. (4.13.01.4109) I have a Sound Blaster Live sound card using the latest drivers.

Is this enough, what more do you need? Thanks for the asistance!!
 
Okay...that's good.

I suspect the most likely problem is that the binkplayer is still loaded in memory somehow instead of shutting down after playig the intro clips.

Go to your main EU2 directory (C:\Strategy First\Europa Universalis 2\ ) and then rename the avi folder to avi_old. Nine times out of ten this will solve the problem.

Let me know if that works and if not then we'll take it from there.
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I renamed the avi folder. A couple of things happened as a result.

(1) The game loads immensely faster because there are no videos. Also, before renaming, when the videos loaded my monitor flickered between screens. This no longer occurs

(2) The game loads up perfectly, as it did before.

(3) The save games still won't work. If I keep the game paused before I click the begin scenarion button, I can scroll around and click on provinces and CoT's and everything, like before. However, as soon as I unpause the game, BOOM, I crash out of it.

(4) During the crash, my desktop reverts to 800x600 for a few seconds before restoring to my normal 1024x768 resolution. I had thought the new video card drivers and DirectX would have solved this, but apparently not.

I hope this enough information for you to help me fix the problem. Because its a 400 year long game, not being able to load saves makes the game unplayable, which is unfortunate, since this seems to be the best game I've ever played.

Thanks for your help!!
 
Let me sugest this: Uninstall EU2 completely - get rid of all directories, files, mods, registry settings, the lot. Defrag your disk. Install Eu2 to C: then apply 1.06 immediately. Try it right then and there with no mods applied. Let us know if that makes any diff. Thanks.


128mb is OK for win98se, but it doesn't handle memory over 64mb very well. EU2 can use up to 384mb profitably. Also consider that the screen resolution problem you report only happens under win9x/me.

So what I'm suggesting is, if you were thinking of upgrading memory and OS anyway, go ahead. I'd recommend win2000 and at least 384 if not 512mb of RAM.
 
Yep...I agree with Andrew that doing a complete uninstall and reinstall would be a good idea since I'm guessing that there's probably a corrupt file in there somewhere. Also you might have a conflicting TSR of some sort running so make sure you disable all unneeded background processes.

Click on the "FAQ link" in my sig and go to the section on Uninstalling EU2 and follow those directions since using a basic uninstall doesn't always work correctly.

Win98SE isn't the most stable of graphic platforms either...so the suggestion of upgrading your OS and memory is an excellent one if it's something you were considering anyway. I've had excellent results with XP as well (home version would suit most users) and having a bare minimum of 256MB RAM is critical. The more the better, though. Also make sure you've got lots of V-RAM space available too (say 700+MB of drive space).
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I have already tried the uninstallation and reinstallation of the game with an immediate patch to 1.06. I never install the mods to the main game directory. I always copy the entire folder and rename it after the mod I'm playing...I've got tons of disk space and it makes it easier for me to keep track of what mod is where.

I've never considered doing the defrag thing. And I've never deleted registry settings when uninstalling. I assumed that the uninstall program would delete the registry stuff when it uninstalled.

I will uninstall and defrag and reinstall and see where this leaves me. Thanks for the help, I'll report back here with the results...hopefully good ones.

One more question...how sensitive are the leader and monarch files to modification...I'm talking ratings editing only? I know from experience in EU! that leaders with ratings too high are unreadable by the game. How sensitive are they to editing with all the event mods and stuff?
 
Defrag on a moderately frequent basis is a very good idea and will also prolong the life of your hard drive - once a week would be a good habit and have the added advantage of improving the performance of your computer in general.

I agree re the registry. This is something that is usually mostly removed but there are occasional bits that get left behind. I've found all sorts of strange lingering bits of things in my registry that were "allegedly" uninstalled by one program or another.

Let's hope that this does the trick. :)

Re the leader and monarch files...as long as you're careful it shouldn't pose a problem. Havard's web site is the definitive source of anything you might wish to know about scripting (unless you can corner Johan sometime :p). He discusses leaders here. As you'll see, allowable leaders stats range from 0-6. Monarch stuff is here with valid stats of 0-9.

Enjoy. :)
 
Everything seems to be working fine now!! :)

I uninstalled all the EU2 stuff and deleted it from the registry. I defragged the hard drive. I ran Norton Systemworks and it found something like 375 errors in my registry. None of the errors were dealing with EU2 or its installation, but hey, whatever works. I unloaded about 5 programs I usually started when Windows loaded, and this got my free resources up to about 82%, which seemes like a lot when its usually around 69 or 70%. 'm not sure what all those programs do, so I only unchecked the ones that I knew what they did. I disable my joystick port in the hardware profile...not sure if this made a difference.

Anyway, I don't know what specifically cured the problem, but thanks a lot for all the help.

Mr.T, on an aside, does Paradox pay you? If they do, you should get a raise. If they don't, well then you should ask them for a paycheck, you certainly deserve it.

Thanks a lot guys and no insult intended by this remark, but I hope I never have to visit this section of the forum again. :D
 
Hey! That's great news. :)

Nope...we're all volunteers, and your heartfelt thanks is more than enough payment.

I hope you don't need to visit again either; but if you do, we'll be here. :cool:
 
Thanks again, your help was immensely appreciated!!
 
Originally posted by Stonewall
Mr.T, on an aside, does Paradox pay you? If they do, you should get a raise. If they don't, well then you should ask them for a paycheck, you certainly deserve it. :D
Click to expand...

Hey, it was my suggestion first! :) Glad it helped.
 
I'm sorry. You should be paid as well. :) For the life of me I can't figure out what went right, but I'm not complaining...everytime I load a game I get nervous, but things seem to work just fine aside from the occasional desktop size not resetting correctly, but I can live with that infrequent occurrence.

Thanks again, you guys are awesome!
 
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