Rare 'crash', game won't start

[fluflu1]

Hello guys! So I am wondering why this game won't start. I tried running as admin and various other 'easy level' fixes, and nothing seems to work. I get this error when I try to run it from the Steam folder...

The text of the error is: The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000005). Click OK to close the application.

And it tries to open but then just immediately stops, as in the Play button on Steam starts launching the game but quickly goes back to the green 'Play' button again. Any ideas here? Running on a Windows 11 Pro laptop, Nvidia RTX graphics and pretty high powered AMD Ryzen 9 cpu. 64gb memory etc.. Please let me know, would love to play again. Thanks!

Hi, I also forgot to mention the game is Evochron Legacy SE.

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[Vice]

Hello,

The image links you posted are not working for some reason, please post it via the forum, another image hosting service, or simply provide the text of the error message.

Since you are running a laptop, it's likely you have split display devices, one integrated and one dedicated. I would initially recommend following the steps here: viewtopic.php?t=6595

Select the issue that most closely matches the error you are encountering. It may simply be a matter of applying your dedicated RTX device to the game so that it activates for such a Vulkan game properly. Or there may be some other dependency or condition that needs to be accounted for. If the problem persists, you can also contact me directly for support: https://www.starwraith.com/evochronlegacy/faq.htm#208 (no need to include the save game, just the zipped msinfo report attached to an e-mail).

[Vice]

Ok, a '0xc0000005' error is a generic memory stop, which generally doesn't provide much information on a cause. If you change the graphics settings in Windows to apply the RTX to the game as the preferred display device and the problem still occurs, I would recommend following the steps at the second link I posted above and I can take a look at your system configuration to try and find a possible cause.

Another step to try in the meantime is to delete or rename the \Documents\EvochronLegacySE folder, then verify the game's cache in Steam (basically checking the game's files), then try launching the game again.

[fluflu1]

Hey Vice. Sure, I'd like you to take a look at my system config if you don't mind. Something weird is going on I think and I'd really appreciate your expert input on the matter. I get the error message instantly when I click to play the game via the .exe in the folder, very weird. I tried re-verifying and the same thing happens. I also added the proper display device for the game in Nvidia Control Panel and the problem persists. I browsed the second link you posted and checked for some stuff there, nothing immediately stands out to me.

I sent you the email with the sysinfo. Please let me know if there's anything else or we can talk via email. Cheers!

[Vice]

Ok, there is a lot to go through there. I see the crashes in the Windows error log reported in other games with faulting modules ranging from 'unknown' to OpenGL, Kernelbase.dll to ntdll.dll, nvapi64.dll (Nvidia) to many various game object code files. The volume of games involved and errors logged is enormous, so this will likely take me some time to get through. Other oddities include you only have 22 GB out of the 64 GB installed on your system available, so something is eating up around 40 GB of your system's memory. Some of the installed and background running software I am not familiar with, so I'll need to research some things to try and learn more about what may be running to formulate some ideas to troubleshoot/try.

With so many crashes logged involving core Windows system files/modules, it's possible this system may have some kind of corruption or past system damage. You can try the 'Check for Possible Windows System File Damage' step at the link above under Symptom #1, but it may have limited effectiveness.

It might also be worth trying the step on the same support page to turn off as many background/startup processes as possible, then if things work, gradually activate them again one at a time to try and pin down a possible cause by something running in the background.

I'll try to follow up later today if I can spot some possibilities for things to try.

[TraderDan]

I'm not nearly as tech savvy as vice but just based on what I just read in the thread it reminds me of some nasty virus I picked up several years back - is it causing issues with other applications? Was there any recent changes made to the system, programs, updates, hardware changes? It might just be as simple as doing a system restore and rolling back to the date the game last worked. Maybe even see if the game will launch in safe mode.

[fluflu1]

Hey @TraderDan ! Thanks for dropping your 2 cents, appreciate it. Hmm, not sure I have any kind of virus because I did a deep scan and system clean with a professional antivirus company person that had me do all sorts of things to look for viruses, clean them and the system up, and so on. The game(s) seemed to work before he worked on the system but I can't recall if I ever played this one on this new laptop, I don't think I have. But I'm not 100% sure either. Could be something he did that is causing this, and yes I do run into this issue with a few other games, I figured it was some weird Windows 11 thing, but another game Total War Medieval 1 doesn't run anymore but also doesn't give an error message either. However there are other smaller games, one RPGMaker game I recall that also gave the same error as this game. So yes I have noticed a few other games either not running or giving me this error.

[TraderDan]

The excessive memory use is what made me think virus but also some anti virus software seems to consume as much memory as some viruses lol. There must be some commonality between applications that aren't running like a runtime or driver issue.

[TraderDan]

I did a little searching, you could try this tool to see what dependencies are needed for an application. Then install or reinstall - they could also be being blocked by antivirus software (shooting from the hip here)

https://www.dependencywalker.com/

[TraderDan]

Oh here's a link I found that lists some common windows dependencies for running games all of Wich you can install / update online it's all free software but is needed for most modern windows apps

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gamin ... k-packages

[fluflu1]

Thanks @TraderDan ! I tried Dependency Walker but it just gave me a generic error in the program about the game. Also, @Vice and I have sort of narrowed it down to some copy protection DRM that is installed on my system somewhere called Tages. It was for some RPG I wanted to play and installed it, can't remember which, and it seems there are 2 files crashing the app before it even gets moving, both related to this Tages stuff. Trying to either find the files on my system (they don't seem to be there) or maybe uninstall Tages but I can't find how to uninstall that either, I don't see the app listed anywhere as it's not really an app but more a side thing. And for the game I installed it with could be any, Silverfall, Risen, Tortuga Two Treasures, just dunno etc..

[TraderDan]

Awesome glad you guys are honing in on it if there are files the game is looking for sometimes a quick and dirty way is to just put the respective .dll or other file in the games install root directory it's worked on some games for me before. But I have faith Vice will figure it out he's sharp as a tack.

[Marvin]

DRMs scare me. I've read about them in a number of different forums and never read anything good. Consequently, after upgrading to a better computer, I've only installed DRM-free games. I have a couple shelves of DRM-infected games which will never see the HD or SSD of my new computer. I plan to put those CDs and DVDs on the coffee table and use them for coasters.

[fluflu1]

Yeah, this DRM seems to have really messed me up, for some reason my laptop is calling on these Tages drivers when starting this game and this game has nothing to do with Tages. They've wormed their way into my OS somehow and now I can't play a bunch of cool games because of it, they just won't start. The uninstallers online for Tages don't work on my end, I could try deleting those files as I spotted them not in System32/DRIVERS but there's something beyond that that's calling them up when it shouldn't be. @Vice sadly said I should probably restore Windows with a fresh install but man, I spent countless hours, days, weeks installing literally thousands of games. I live eat and breathe this laptop and have got all the rare stuff I could find, have 4000 games installed via Steam alone, and man, it would be heartbreaking and a disaster if I had to wipe this clean. It's still not that old of a laptop so hopefully something else can be done, but I'd need others looking into the problem for me as well. Maybe some sort of registry editing could get it done, but I haven't a clue how to go about doing all that without help. Hoping this laptop can be saved, man...

[Marvin]

Vice is correct. And I know the pain. My son pulled everything from my laptop, saved it to an external, and then did exactly what Vice suggested. Only, in my case, it was because my laptop was running Windows 7, which gave my son the security shivers. He wiped the HD and installed Windows 10. Anyway, if you have all those games saved to Steam, at least your games are safe. Getting rid of a DRM is like trying to get rid of a hidden virus which keeps showing up no matter how many times you scan your computer and attempt to delete it. If I were you, I'd follow Vice's instructions and, at first, only install the games you plan to play now. With luck, some of them will have your progress saved to the Cloud. But, in no case, should you install anything with a DRM.

[TraderDan]

Just started looking into Tages DRM and my goodness does it look nasty... Looks like maybe you can remove it using some ... Not so legal means but I'll have to do some research - first time I've heard of it but I definitely won't be having that on my PC ever.

[TraderDan]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1231181951


Has tages been applied to certain apps? If so you'd have to reinstall those from a non tages source

Most folks are saying to uninstall tages you have to download the appropriate setup / installer you used and should be an "uninstall" options

[TraderDan]

https://www.neoseeker.com/forums/62/t17 ... -of-my-pc/

Yeah lots of folks complaining about tages doing exactly the kinda things that are happening to your laptop

Option 1 do a system restore to a point before tages was installed

Option 2 find the game / tages installer that started this whole mess and run it again but select the "uninstall" option

[Vice]

We've been trying to work through steps to avoid reinstalling Windows entirely. There may also be other factors beyond Tages and some efforts have run into challenges. 0xc0000005 errors can be difficult to pin down, often driver related, but can have other causes as well. Still trying to go through things one step at a time and explore for possibilities. Hopefully, a solution will be found.

[TraderDan]

If you guys figure it out I'd be interested to know what the solution is, love a good mystery story so long as the good guys figure it out in the last 5 mins after the commercial break lol.

[Marvin]

0xc0000005 errors can be difficult to pin down, often driver related...,

Reminds me of the old Commodore 64 "DRM" where booting up a game sent the floppy drive seeker head into conniptions, banging the drive out of alignment. Copy software couldn't read and write the boot partition, preventing pirated copies. Until somebody figured out how to get around it.

[TraderDan]

Haha I remember this - found one at a garage sale few years ago with a bunch of pirated floppies

I was a poor kid though had an NES and my step brothers hand me down Tandy Color Computer 2 with a BASIC handbook, Tetris, Downland, and Dungeons of Daggaroth - loved that game but tough to play when half the keys were missing lol

[fluflu1]

Yeah, never did figure this out, even after some registry edits. Any other ideas @Vice ? Thanks again for the help so far.

[Vice]

Nothing else comes to mind, we've exhausted the options available that were present in what limited information could be gathered through the system overview. Digging into it further would likely require a far deeper study on the state of the system and history of installed software as well as events.

If the alterations/damages are so deeply embedded into the core system files/settings/registry of the operating system that normal operation can't be achieved nor a cause found, there may be no other feasible option than a full restoration. Restore points can sometimes help, but that also doesn't appear to be an option with your system. There likely is a way to repair and restore it without a full reinstall of the OS, but without sufficient evidence and a breadcrumb trail to follow as to what was installed (or done) that made the changes or caused the damage, it's likely not very practical to correct such a condition.

There is also still a chance there may be some kind of hardware failure, but it's likely related to something in a driver, system file(s), or other system altering condition. If you google '0xc0000005 error' along with any additional words or phrases to narrow a search, you can read through some options that have solved it for others. Many of which you've already been through with this process, but you might spot something more related to your specific event/program history.

Edit: By restructuring the startup format of the game, we were able to sort out a solution. It dramatically changes how the game initializes and launches, so further testing is needed to verify this approach doesn't break anything for other players. Once I complete an array of tests to confirm this approach is just as broadly compatible as the original, I'll plan on rolling out the changes in the next update. Such tests will likely take some time.

Edit X2 > 02-24-2025: Update 2.0758 has rolled out with the changes applied.

[TraderDan]

The googling on Tages I saw was that each install has its own fingerprint - meaning that a tages bundled with one game will be different from another or even a stand alone installer or uninstaller. You have to find the EXACT download that had the tages that started the whole mess - fully install again then uninstall it using the same installer. Ive never done this myself but this was based on several threads I read on steam about it. I guess it couldn't hurt you don't have much to lose right?