Problems Installing Medieval : Total War

[Bad Boy]

Indeed, after putting both C.Ds in the drive, and watching the bar slowly reaching 100%... an error message appears, and the installation crashes at the last minute. Had anyone got this problem, and if so, knows how to fix it?

[frogbeastegg]

Welcome to the org http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I've placed a copy of your post in the apothecary you can look at it here (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=2;t=10163;r=1;&#top)

[Kraellin]

what was the error message?

did you try the install more than once and did you get the error message at the same place every time?

clean the cd's with a very soft cloth or tissue or toilet paper. tissue or toilet paper seems best since there's less chance of lint.

check your drive to make sure there's enough space left for the install and enough space on the C: drive for a healthy swap file.

clean your cd drive. the cleaning kits are inexpensive and can extend the life of your drive.

yes, we have seen this. sometimes it's your system, sometimes the copy protection interferes with the install and sometimes an interrupt can do it. turn off all unnecessary background tasks, particularly anti-virus programs. if you're connected to the internet at the time of the install, disconnect and then try again. if you're running almost any microsoft application like office or works, disable them temporarily. a number of those have polling services that cause interrupts and could interfere with an install.

be persistent. some of that copy protection stuff is pretty fussy. if all else fails, take your copy back and exchange it for another. we have seen some bad burns of cd's in the past.

K.

[Bad Boy]

Thank you, frogbeastegg.

Translated (I bought the game in France, and it's a new copy), the message should say : Serious Problems : The installation failed and will now be canceled. Every other C.D works, so it's not the drive. I tried the installation 6 times, and yes, the message always appears at the end.

I'll try some of the other stuff though. Thanks.

[Kraellin]

bought the game in france... where do you live? could this be one of those regional things, computer set for one region and cd restricted to another? sorry, not real familiar with those.

i'd also run a virus sweep of your system. maybe do a defrag. time consuming, but wont hurt anything and always good to do once in a while anyways.

if you just bought this, and all other cd's and installs are working, then i'd be real tempted to just take the thing back and exchange it. or maybe try it on another machine first and see if that works. chances are, that if it installs on a dissimilar machine from yours, then the cd is bad.

K.

[Bad Boy]

Quote[/b] ]bought the game in france... where do you live? could this be one of those regional things, computer set for one region and cd restricted to another? sorry, not real familiar with those.

I thought about that too. I live in Taiwan (where my computer was made), and the game was made in the E.U (it says so on the C.Ds). So, indeed, it could be that. That's also why I cannot take it back, since I'm quite far away from the store where I bought it. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

I already made a virus checking today, so that's not it. Hmm... I'll see if I can get it installed on my other computer (even if it's not powerful enough to run it).

[Bad Boy]

Wow, it actually worked on the other computer. Now, the problem is that I have to copy 1750Mo of game files using only floppy disks, or try to find another solution. Hmm... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Kraellin]

k. the cd itself seems to be ok then. some of these cd rom drives are a bit touchy, specially if the cd's are copy protected.

a couple things you can try, though. swap cd drives from one to the other computer. this might tell you if it's your cd drive at fault or your system on the computer that the install isnt working. if it fails to work, then most likely you've got some sort of bug with the harddrive.

defrag the harddrive and try again.

raise your swap file size on c: and make sure you have at least 100 megs of free space on the c: drive and a couple gigs on wherever you're trying to install the game.

clean the cd rom heads. cleaning kits are cheap.

just off hand, my guess leans towards something being wrong with the harddrive at this point. run scan disk and maybe disk doctor or dr. watson or norton system works and run some diagnostics on the drive. sandra 2000 (or whatever the current version is) would be good too.

the thing is, when windows copies stuff from a cd to a harddrive, it doesnt just do it all at once. it takes chunks and copies over each chunk to the drive. when it's all done, i believe it also does a verification check to make sure it's got it all and assembled it all back right. the most common error for a copy failure is not enough space. on earlier systems windows didnt first check for file space available and just started the copy and expected you to be the smart one in making sure there was enough space available for the full copy. i believe in windows xp it now reads ahead and checks this first, but i wont swear to this. so, if you get to the end of the copy and it goes kaboom, this usually indicates not enough file space or a bad sector being copied too. the bad sector is why i want you to do a defrag....the loooong version where it checks for disk integrity and locks out any bad spaces.

all it takes is one cluster on the harddrive being bad and the whole install will go kaboom.

also, if you have one of those raw read copy programs and a cd rom burner, you could make a duplicate of the cd and try that, but that's kind of a longshot at this point. i dont think it's the cd.

keep me posted.

K.

[Reynald]

Hi BadBoy.... are u getting any code with the error message and if so can u list it here and ill try and help? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Bad Boy]

I don't believe it's the C.D drive, since I have two (one C.D burner and one DVD drive) and tried the C.Ds on both. Same thing for the harddrive (one with 2Gbs remaining and one with 15Gbs). Another thing to mention, though. I can't open the Help file directly from the autorun (I have to open it manually), but it works on my second computer).


Quote[/b] ]Hi BadBoy.... are u getting any code with the error message and if so can u list it here and ill try and help?

No code, unfortunatly.

[Kraellin]

sounding a lot like a windows type problem, where windows isnt seeing your drives quite right. might also check bios, but really sounding like a windows thing at this point. you have win98se, right?

by any chance do you have Norton Ghost and have saved images of your harddrive? could just replace the stuff on the c: drive with an image file and might fix it.

if not, time for a scan disk, defrag, and possible re-install of windows. you might find a program for checking and fixing win 98, but i'm not sure what that would be. win98 was rather poor about tools for fixing itself.

this could also be heat related. windows can do odd things when the processors start heating up. check your bios monitors if you have them.

K.

[Reynald]

Agree with Kraelin it does sound like a win98 prob... check to see if u can find the prob your having here ( I'm assuming your getting a BSOD&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
(http://www.infinisource.com/techfiles/fatal-0e-errors.htm).
hope it helps and good luck

[Bad Boy]

No, I have Windows XP Home Edition. I'll try a scandisk larer though. I should also mention I've got a new error which appears near 80~85% of the installation (I got it the first and second times I tried to install the game, but it didn't come back until now).

Windows - Wrong Volume
The wrong volume is in the drive. Please insert volume MEDIEVAL_TW_CD1 into drive E:.

I can't actually close the error until inserting the first CD, but the installation still continues after it appears.

[el_slapper]

Commentaire[/b] (Bad Boy @ Aout 20 2003,06:19)]No, I have Windows XP Home Edition. I'll try a scandisk larer though. I should also mention I've got a new error which appears near 80~85% of the installation (I got it the first and second times I tried to install the game, but it didn't come back until now).

Windows - Wrong Volume
The wrong volume is in the drive. Please insert volume MEDIEVAL_TW_CD1 into drive E:.

I can't actually close the error until inserting the first CD, but the installation still continues after it appears.
I've got the same message(french version too), but it worked on my XP new PC... Bizarre... the swapping of CDs is strange, but finally works...

And I've NEVER heard of special regional settings for PC games. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif