EB will not load up

I've experienced a strange problem when it comes to modding EB, bear with me, this could get complicated.

Firstly I have tried doing lots of small alterations to various files. Even though I used notepad++ these alterations usually resulted in EB failing to load up, despite being entirely valid alterations which should not have caused problems. I subsequently re-installed and tried altering the files one at a time to test which one caused it to not start up. I tested most of the files succesfully until i got to the last file, the EDCT which caused the failure.

I restored the original back up of the EDCT, but alas, still resulted in EB failing to load up. I did a fresh install of EB again, but alas, EB failed to load up even after the fresh install.

I re-downloaded EB, and re-installed it, and it worked! I then did some alterations to a few files which resulted in the failure to load up.

I re-installed again: it didn't work.
I re-downloaded again and re-installed EB and trivial script: still did not work. It now seems that EB is just totally refusing to load up.

So I have several questions:
Why has it just stopped loading altogether? How can I fix this?
Why when I modded some files did EB randomly decide when to load and not load?

Thank goodness I have a really fast computer and internet connection, or I would have given up halfway through. Good thing it only takes 5 minutes to install.

I hope that wasn't too much of a mouthful.

which files are you modding?

still it's weird that only re-downloading again it works...

and If I may give a suggestion try doing a backup of the original Rome - Total war folder , and install a new EB there , that will be your EB backup so you don't have to reinstall nor re-download anything, ( I'm not sure if it matters but enter the new RTW folder and delete the ebconfig file there )

Well this is very strange. Upon loading up my computer the next day and loading up EB it works, with all the modded files. Very very weird. It's like EB is choosing randomly when to load and when to crash upon loading.

Also worth noting, there's a tell tale sign of when it fails to load - the computer hardly makes a sound and the rtw box is there for ages, whereas when it succeeds in loading up, the computer whirrs away. It seems more like a problem that my computer just doesn't even try loading anything.

Edit: After playing a long session with a koinon hellanon campaign, I exitted EB. Now I am trying to load it again, but it's not working! I haven't touched any of the files. This must be an issue with my computer, but I have no idea what could be causing it. It's very liekly that when I load it up to play this time tomorrow, it will work. Could it be a problem with over-heating which makes my computer refuse to load up the game until it has had time to cool down?

Sounds like a harddrive problem. How old is your harddrive? Could be close to the end.

Foot

Actually it's about a month old, brand spanking new. The whole computer is very new, and the specs are very good, which makes the problem seem even more weird.

Check your event log the next time this happens. It might say something about your video drivers or give an other indication of what is the problem.

How do I check the event log?

Control Panel => Administrative tools => Event viewer.

Check all of them, I'm not sure where the error messages would appear.

Well I checked eventslog and found an error report:
Faulting application rometw.exe, version 1.0.0.0, faulting module
~df394b.tmp, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x000c486b.

If that makes any sense to anyone.

Likely a page/segmentation fault. The OS was 'told' "fetch this at xyz" and reported back "huh?! there is NO data here!"

Which may be what happened, but unfortunately it leaves us little closer to figuring out how to avoid it.

Have you run memtest? If not, you should do that now. Start it when you go to bed, then see the report when you wake up.

How do I run memtest? Sorry, I never use these control panel programs.

Memtest Googled
First hit. Download and install. Run.