Crash on starting a Campaign

[Suraknar]

Alright, have been trying to fix this for the past 2 days.

Whenever I would click the button to start a new Grand Campaign, the screen would go White, and I would get an Exception which would result in the game crashing, or a memory Dump that would cause my system to restart.

Uninstalled the game via Steam and reinstalled, and would not fix the issue.

(I noticed a problem here this time, after the game installed Steam started updating it, but the final installation screen has the check to launch the game, so the game did try to launch with the updating being at 34%, it may have corrupted some files)

Nevertheless, I started thinking drivers issue (or worse Video Card issues), so Updated Nvidia Drivers from Asus (not from Nvidia), and also got the latest DirectX 9c (November 2008 edition), as I am running WinXP SP3.

Then reinstalled the game a third time.

Low and behold, the crash happened again, I was out of options.

Finally it hit me to try to clear the preferences file under Documents and Settings\(Your Profile)\Application Data\The Creative assembly\Empire\Scripts\ and renamed the Preferences.empire_script.txt to Preferences.empire_scripts.bak and started the game, Also deleted Saved Game Files too, both of which do not get removed when you uninstall the game with steam, this time all worked nicely.

I also did notice a more fluid performance, most possibly due to the updated Drivers and DirectX.

Just thought to share this here for anyone else that may have experienced this.


Event viewer data:
Faulting application empire.exe, version 1.0.0.0, faulting module empire.exe, version 1.0.0.0, fault address 0x008037cc.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 65 6d 70 ure emp
0018: 69 72 65 2e 65 78 65 20 ire.exe
0020: 31 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 1.0.0.0
0028: 69 6e 20 65 6d 70 69 72 in empir
0030: 65 2e 65 78 65 20 31 2e e.exe 1.
0038: 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 61 74 0.0.0 at
0040: 20 6f 66 66 73 65 74 20 offset
0048: 30 30 38 30 33 37 63 63 008037cc
0050: 0d 0a ..


System Specs:

WINXP SP3
AMD Phenom 3X 2.4 Ghz
4 Gig of DDR2 1066 Mgz RAM
Nvidia 9600 GT 512 DDR3 1800 Mgz VRAM
EIDE HDDs. (I know they slow going SATA soon).

Cheers!

[Mori Zennousha]

Greetings Suraknar,

Thanks a million for this post... you have saved me from a lot more aggravation than I have already experienced, and I am certain you will save many others as well!

This is the first game I have gotten through Steam, and I was seriously beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake. I'm not blaming Steam at all, mind you; it's just that, when things go wrong, there's one more software layer there that could be causing problems...

One thing I would say to the patch-makers at CA: if the cause for crashes like these is something as simple as this, can't you take care of it when the patch is applied? One was just released on the 10th, right? Just throwing that out there...

Thanks again, Suraknar,

z

oh yeah:
WinXP Pro SP3
AMD Athlon X2 4200+
3GB OCZ DDR2
Gigabyte 9800GT 1GB GDDR3

[jsberry]

Pardon the n00b question, but, how do I find out my computer's sceps?

[A Very Super Market]

You could look at the sticker on your computer.

[Monarch]

Pardon the n00b question, but, how do I find out my computer's sceps?

Run (or search if on vista) "dxdiag"

[jsberry]

Thanks Monarch. Can somebody please tell me if this is supposed to be sufficient for ETW:

Time of this report: 3/14/2009, 21:59:07
Machine name: HOME-5BB1502475
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.080814-1242)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
System Model: NVDAACPI
BIOS: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Memory: 958MB RAM
Page File: 597MB used, 946MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

[Mori Zennousha]

Thanks Monarch. Can somebody please tell me if this is supposed to be sufficient for ETW:

Time of this report: 3/14/2009, 21:59:07
Machine name: HOME-5BB1502475
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.080814-1242)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
System Model: NVDAACPI
BIOS: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Memory: 958MB RAM
Page File: 597MB used, 946MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

Hey man,

I was going to ask about your video card, but that's probably not even necessary... 958MB RAM? That's not going to cut the proverbial mustard. And if you're on an integrated graphics machine, well, you're going to have some work to do before it's ready for ETW. Depending on what you've got, a new machine may be in order.

hope that helps,
z

[pevergreen]

If that can play a decent battle on low settings, I would be surprised.
:shrug:

[Suraknar]

Greetings Suraknar,

Thanks a million for this post... you have saved me from a lot more aggravation than I have already experienced, and I am certain you will save many others as well!

This is the first game I have gotten through Steam, and I was seriously beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake. I'm not blaming Steam at all, mind you; it's just that, when things go wrong, there's one more software layer there that could be causing problems...

One thing I would say to the patch-makers at CA: if the cause for crashes like these is something as simple as this, can't you take care of it when the patch is applied? One was just released on the 10th, right? Just throwing that out there...

Thanks again, Suraknar,

z

oh yeah:
WinXP Pro SP3
AMD Athlon X2 4200+
3GB OCZ DDR2
Gigabyte 9800GT 1GB GDDR3

Greetings Mori Zennousha,

Your welcome, glad it helped.

---

JSberry, I would put another Gig or Ram, and you should be good to go.

[Phog_of_War]

The solution for the GC crash is here. Hope it works for you.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=114404