Trying to see what this is, many two-digit numbers

odysseus · Post by **odysseus** » Wed May 14, 2008 5:39 am

I've had your wikipedia page open for a while now, decided to try installing some space games. Not sure what I'm looking for yet, but the last choice (X1?) seemed to be a bit aged, lol. Was in JumpGate for some time, before they started populating the world full of those conflux thingies.

This game seems lovely, but I'm getting at least three different errors at various points, either when loading, entering the title splash screen of the demo, or trying to load a pilot. I have never gotten past the create/load pilot screen. I am getting a combination of Error 99 (the most usual), error 31, and occasionally 91 (i think, that last might be 92)

Have just upgraded my video drivers to the most recent (Dec07), running WinXP SP3.

Google of this error states that I need to either look at the permissions of my Program Files folder or windows temporary folder, remove the struts from somewhere, stop trying to enter the atmosphere, or download an update to Alliance 2.0 (is that compatible?)

My video screen is currently set to 1680x1050x32 and process explorer reports physical: 1572336 kb total, 879544 kb avail, 610952 kb cache.

So, anything obvious? A better glossary of these error codes might be nice...

MMaggio · Post by **MMaggio** » Wed May 14, 2008 8:33 am

Hoo Boy! Please don't be discouraged Odysseus, our creator, Vice, will be along in a few hours and straighten this out for you.
Trust me, once the game is loaded and you've played the demo, you'll be thrilled!
Stay calm, be patient, and all will be made right!
Keep the faith!

Post by **Vice** » Wed May 14, 2008 2:26 pm

Those errors generally relate to resource problems. It indicates the game is not being allowed to load media it needs. There are typically two causes for this. The first, and most likely, is you are running other software in the background that is blocking the game from being able to load media it needs. Make sure you are not running certain anti-virus software while trying to play the game, especially Norton, McAffee, or AVG, which are known to have interference problems with games. The other possible cause is insufficient or unavailable memory. You only have about half of your memory available to programs apparently, so turn off any non-essential background tasks, then test. If the problem persists, follow the steps outlined here and I can review your configuration for other possible causes: http://www.starwraith.com/evochronrenegades/faq.htm#8

[Edited on 5-14-2008 by Vice]

tha_rami · Post by **tha_rami** » Wed May 14, 2008 10:32 pm

Somebody actually read the Wikipedia page. Now I don't feel that useless anymore, lol. Did you like the read?

odysseus · Post by **odysseus** » Thu May 15, 2008 5:37 am

I did try to run the client on a fresh reboot without firefox running (which is generally the biggest memory hog) with no major changes in behavior. I've been running it recently with -mode1

I'm currently running eTrust AV, which I have never had problems with blocking someone (although it will occasionally jump CPU to 100% for long periods if a program is trying to access more than a couple thousand files at once); putting it to sleep gave me an ERROR 10 (new error!) before going back to ERROR 31 and then ERROR 99.

I don't seem to have MSINFO32 on my system; it opens up the Microsoft Support And WellBeing Wizard when i start it from start->run, and there ain't no file menu there. I do have DXDIAG though, would that be useful?

If i'm not too tired (been a long day at work) I may try to do a filesystem trace and see if there are any obvious errors coming out of the windows file api.

As for the wikipedia, I must admit that I was a bit confused when I actually went to the web page not being able to find the programs that I was looking for, lol. Think I figured out after I downloaded Renegades as to which "series" it belonged to.

Post by **Vice** » Thu May 15, 2008 6:05 am

I'm not familiar with eTrustAV, but it is the most likely potential cause. 'Putting it to sleep' may not necessarily turn it off entirely, you may just be turning off some of its tasks/protections. Check the task list to see if it still has running processes in the background even when you set to some kind of sleep mode. A good free alternative that seems to have far fewer issues with games is Avast ( http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html ) if that indeed turns out to be the problem.

As for memory, I doubt it plus Firefox would consume so much memory, so there may be other things running also that could cause interference and be reducing your available memory in half.

DXDIAG won't give me information on specific information that can help. See if you actually have the file in the windows\\system32 or C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\MSInfo folder (msinfo32.exe). If you really don't, then there may be more serious problems with your system.

All of the listed errors still relate to the game being blocked from loading media it needs.

[Edited on 5-15-2008 by Vice]

Duckmurderer · Post by **Duckmurderer** » Thu May 15, 2008 6:28 am

Avast! is awesome.

Also, once you get past the errors, I'm sure you'll enjoy them. Don't be discouraged by them popping up on the demo.

Vice is a genius when it comes to fixing this stuff. What was it again, I think tha_rami (or verb) pointed out an error and Vice put up a patch no less than 15 minutes later. @_@

odysseus · Post by **odysseus** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:34 am

Lol, well that at least gives me some good feelings here. I haven't even seen what this game is, and I seem to have blown through a bunch of them over the years, worried I might be a bit finickey...

I did find MSINFO32 in C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\MSInfo. Loading the executable into notepad I figured out that it throws you to the WellBeing Wizard unless you supply command-line parameters, I'm exploring it now (although the filesystem trace seems to have thrown my system out of whack a bit, one process is stuck at 100% cpu right now)

Filesystem trace dumped several hundred thousand messages on me. No clue if I'm reading anything relevant, but I do see a number of errors loosely translated as "you cannot create a file so soon after deleting an identical file". Many caveats: (1) it's heck difficult to read someone else's filestream and know what is expected and what isn't, (2) the trace only turned up ERROR 31s, (3) the trace slows everything on the system to dog-slow speed, which may cause other issues.

Anyhow, I'm tired and it looks like i need to reboot again. I have the capability to create .NFO files now, will send one along the next day or so.

odysseus · Post by **odysseus** » Sun May 18, 2008 9:16 am

Not sure what value a reply has here, although I am making a little progress.

From my perspective, analysis of the NFO file had little obvious problems and mostly went over issues previously mentioned in this thread. The AV product of unrecognized brand was a strong focus as potential source, as well as the fact that even though my video drivers were updated last week that they still showed 2003 dates. The latter is a bit disappointing, I'm guessing that my video card is no longer supported by nvidia.

As for the AV, I'm not willing at the moment to wipe it for the purposes of this client (although I may reconsider if I found more reason to). I've seen what both Norton and McAfee do and I trust this program to not do the things those two do. I'm thinking that its effect at this point would be mostly contributory though.

I'm fairly certain at this point that the issue is related to an attempt to create files too quickly after deleting them. On my system at least, an attempt to create a file at least 0.00165 sec after deleting it succeeds, while attempting to create it 0.001 sec or faster fails with a DeletePending error (and the client quickly errors out).

I have tried to run the client with the trace running in the background (to try to slow things down) and (after a few minutes waiting for it to load) have managed to get as far as finishing the flight training (kewl!) but the running trace would cause the client to pause at strategic points (jumping, firing, docking, undocking, etc...) and I haven't yet been able to get through again.

I have read earlier in this thread that others have received fast-track builds to resolve issues that they have reported. Please DO NOT think that I am asking for this, I see a lot of reasons why you would not want to deal with this, and my focus is moving elsewhere anyhow (although I do hope that this information might be helpful to you in the future). I may continue to revisit this as I think of new things to try (it is an interesting problem after all) but unless I become a contributing member I do not see any further need for my presence here.

Tpol · Post by **Tpol** » Sun May 18, 2008 4:01 pm

If you're running Windows XP, have you tried EndItAll? I use it a lot when I get too much stuttering and lag in first-person-shooter games. It gives you a one-click button for temporarily stopping all non-essential processes and programs from running, so that only the essential things plus games and teamspeak or ventrilo, will be running.

When you're finished gaming, just reboot your pc and everything comes back like it was. In other words, EndItAll doesn't permanently disturb anything on your computer.

I've recommended it to lots of folks, and it's helped many of them.

Here's where to get it http://www.the-old-sea-dog.net/enditall.html

odysseus · Post by **odysseus** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 6:40 am

Well, I think I've managed to figure out how to run this program now so that it doesn't crash out on me, although I'm still concerned that it's gonna throw some strange error at some critical moment. At least I've gotten it running long enough to start the timer at least :-)

Now I just need to figure out how to get through this learning curve. So far I've been blown up at least 5 times in the last few minutes, at least twice by those racing cubes and once by the forcefield surrounding a station. I'll figure it out sometime...