Trouble installing ETW? Please read!

[Quickening]

Ok, you install the game, then under the My Games tab, click Activate a Steam product or whatever it is. go through that and put the SF code in, it will download like 10kb, and then done.

Hi. I did that amd according to the FAQ on totalwar.com I should see them listed under the DLC tab in the games properties on Steam yet I do not so I'm not sure what that means.

By the way in the end I had to download the rest of the game through steam. After four hours of trying neither my second disk nor my friends would work.

[A Very Super Market]

You bought the boxed vs. right?

Reinstall, then restart again.

[A Very Super Market]

Ouch.

If your friend installed it, he could put it on two flashsticks, and you could move them to the steamapps folder...

[pyradyn]

I am having a problem when I play the grand campaign it crashed my whole computer and it restarts. However RTI works just fine in map and battles. I am running at just under Recommended requirements and well above minimum anyone seeing the same problems or know a way to fix. I hope it is not re-install it is a 2 hour install :( any help please

[LostLegion]

I have the same problem with my whole game crashing.....plus i cant have my game on anything but medium...i just bought a new computer this winter!:(...wats goin on??

[pyradyn]

I do not know but so far I have paid 70 dollars for the RTI campaign and not very happy I hope it is fixed soon

[LostLegion]

I hear ya man....im not too impressed yet either...i never had this problem with any other total war games

[Polemists]

Sadly guys, your best bet may be to e-mail CA's customer support.

The fact you can run RTI but not the grand campaign leads me to believe it is either a file error or a error with the disk.

The only way to know if your disk is damaged that I know of is the old fashioned way. Which is to copy and paste the entire contents of the grand campaign map to another file folder and see if they copy.

If that fails you, I'd say your two hopes are either a reinstall or hope the patch next week with graphical fixes addresses your issue.

[Fisherking]

I merged a couple of threads here…we are getting too cluttered.

Problems belong in hardware/software

I realize this is game specific but please try to keep these sorts of threads to a minimum.

Every single problem on every machine having its own thread is a bit much to deal with and doesn’t leave room for any other topics.

Thanks All!

[Gazius]

yeah had a look matey but only really came across cheat codes and the paradox interactive forum that doesnt have a strategy section annoyingly enough :(.

Just post in the main HoI2 or HoI2: DDA forum as appropriate, the community is pretty friendly. I'd also recommend www.paradoxian.org.

[Sir Beane]

Several threads involving installation problems are being merged with this thread. Expect some temporary turbulence before normal service resumes.

Any installation problem thread posted in this Fourm will be merged with this one to prevent clutter.

[pfmodel]

I am a great fan of the Total War series of games and it was total horror i discovered you need to use the highly annoying, buggy and unreliable steam to actually install the game and probably to play it. After having a terrible time getting the equally crappy Galactic Civilisation equivalent of steam (I can't remember its name as I have totally uninstalled it and no longer play any of those games which require it). Can I please beg the designers of the game to not use steam's - or at least offer those who buy the boxed game the option of avoiding it.

Perhaps this is suitable in countries which charge for bandwidth rather than downloading data, but in my country the updates can take several hours to download and it can end up costing me a fortune, which makes the game valueless.

I have always avoided steam based games, but my love of Total War overcome this - unfor7nbtaly the experience has been so awful I will probably return the game and will never purchase any others which require steam. (Or scream)

Now for some useful hints. If you are installing the game from the boxed version remeber to use the registration code at the rear of the game manual and not the special forces units. Once installed, it will take several hours to download the updates. You may find yourself getting a "The steam servers are too busy to handle my request?" before the installation occurs. Unfortunately you will have to keep on re-trying until the inital patches down load. The system may try and download the full game, which will take multiple hours if you don't live in the US or UK (or Korea). You will have to kill it and re-try. If you search for "empire total war The steam servers are too busy to handle my request?" on goggle you will find the web is filled with other folks who are experincing the same issue. You can find some useful hints.

My final comment is, if you find steams annoying, please voice your concern.

[foop]

A cautionary tale...

I should have been more worried when I put DVD 1 in and instead of seeing "Install Game", I got the options to Play, Reinstall or Uninstall Empire: Total War. I haven't played the demo, and although I use Steam I have nothing Empire-related installed on it.

To cut a long story short, after much weirdness I've had to reinstall Steam. This means that should I wish to play any of my Steam games I will have to download them again. Not exactly a disaster, but not the best of outcomes either.

[pevergreen]

simply save your steamapps folder.

[foop]

simply save your steamapps folder.

The important bit, of course, being to do this before the installation process breaks the stuff in your steamapps folder. I've no idea what happened - things were still in there, but steam wasn't recognising them.

Still, it's not as if I'm going to be playing anything other than E:TW for a while, so it's not a disaster.

[moonshiner57]

I actually have the same problem as Quickening - when Steam prompts me to insert the second disc from my boxed special forces edition (from amazon.co.uk), the install freezes and appearently my windows explorer as well. It's as if the drive can't read the disc.

What to do now? I'll try to 'update' the botched install via Steam and see what that will break. It's not as if installs were nice and easy with Medieval, RTW or Med2... no karma points here, CA!

[AussieGiant]

Well I seem to be royal *&%^*&%.

Boxed copy, Special Forces edition.

Install.

Firewall blocks.

I lower the security settings.

Steam installs account created.

Auto Run Disk 1. It provides me with progression and I enter the code off the back of the manual NOT the Special Forces flyer.

Then I get Steam servers are busy.

Then I get a notification that it will install my files from Steam online and it will take 16 hours at 256kb.

I can't uninstall as it hasn't even created a Sega folder and from add/remove programs it has a remove button.

When I press the remove button it and I get taken to my Steam account.

I'm essentially being forced to down load if from Steam!!!

HOLY E$^% JESUS!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Murf the Less than Average]

Do I have to have internet access on the computer I install the game on?

[Marquis of Roland]

Sigh......my copy of ETW special forces doesn't even contain the cd-key. I've been typing in the special forces download key for an entire day.....

Anyone else missing their cd-keys (other than tom paine a few posts above)? I live in California, I don't know if its a regional product release issue or what. Anyway, I guess I'm going back to the store for another copy. I sure feel bad for those people that skipped work, this sucks more than all the bugs in M2TW combined.

[AussieGiant]

Ok belay that order gentlemen.

The game upon settling for some minutes has finally recognised I have a local copy and has gone ahead and installed.

I'm just defragmenting my HDD now before jumping in.

[kingnathers7]

Well I seem to be royal *&%^*&%.

Boxed copy, Special Forces edition.

Install.

Firewall blocks.

I lower the security settings.

Steam installs account created.

Auto Run Disk 1. It provides me with progression and I enter the code off the back of the manual NOT the Special Forces flyer.

Then I get Steam servers are busy.

Then I get a notification that it will install my files from Steam online and it will take 16 hours at 256kb.

I can't uninstall as it hasn't even created a Sega folder and from add/remove programs it has a remove button.

When I press the remove button it and I get taken to my Steam account.

I'm essentially being forced to down load if from Steam!!!

HOLY E$^% JESUS!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

lol you are lucky says it will take me 1 day and 7 hours to install
it just got to 2% installed and then the servers got busy
back to the store for me i think

[AussieGiant]

Yeah, the download option from Steam is not an option.

I'm actually wondering how close they have been to "going down" since the game came out earlier in the week...I'm sure there has been a few hairy moments.

[crushinator]

I've had all sorts of trouble with steam wanting to download the whole game (even though i have a cd version).

Found a guide that gets around it. The important part is:
6. Now create a shortcut on your desktop by right mouse click>>>new>>>shortcut, now a box will appear for you to enter some text.

7. Click and paste the following:

“C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe” -install e:

press next, name the shortcut press ok.

(please note the e: should be the drive letter of where your installation dvd is inserted, this is dependant on how your system is set up)

For example if your DVD drive is d, then the only amendment to the above code would be:

“C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe” -install d:


full guide here:

http://howdoiinstallempiretotalwar.wordpress.com/

[crushinator]

Just to follow up, I also had the problem where the installation froze half way through installing the second disc. Tried reinstalling 2-3 times and it froze at the exact same point.

So i copied both discs onto a spare hard drive, and used the manual install command "steam.exe -install t: "

but pointed it towards the hard drive I had copied both DVD's too. Installed first time without a hitch.

I hope this helps anyone with the same issues.

[Polemists]

You'd think with CD's it would know just to install from the CD's.

That'd be pretty upsetting.

All in all i'm not sure what happened or is happening. I went home, had 20-30 min lunch. Popped in disk one, steam booted up, no busy message or anything, got a message preparing local cache or whatever, then the box poped up for install, (With the guy and the flag) that bar completly filled and in steam, under app, it read Installing. There were no percentages or anything tho, so hopefully it's working fine.

[Dalthius]

Well all I know is the game runs like CRAP. I'm running a Quad Core (see my stats page a few posts up), but I think a lot of my problems are due to my 7950 GTX.

I can't seem to find the proper balance with my resolution, either. 1920 x 1200 is just way too much for my crappy card to handle. I'm running somewhere around 1600 now, but I'm not happy with it. The game is certainly playable, but I have everything on low and it looks TERRIBLE. The campaign map still stutters slightly, the occassional video is almost unwatchable (duelling videos I can't watch, and the last video in the RtI campaign....but all the others are fine, weird), and every now and again I get lag in battles.

When I was toying with settings, the game looked GREAT on high but was just unplayable.

Other than sending the computer (laptop, Sager) back for a %^&*#$@ $900 upgrade or building a desktop, anybody have any recommendations for settings?

[A Very Super Market]

I've got this too, but my computer is significantly worse than yours.

2.4 Dual-core
geforce 6150 (!)
4 Gb RAM

I've gotten used to low...

[pevergreen]

Well all I know is the game runs like CRAP. I'm running a Quad Core (see my stats page a few posts up), but I think a lot of my problems are due to my 7950 GTX.

I can't seem to find the proper balance with my resolution, either. 1920 x 1200 is just way too much for my crappy card to handle. I'm running somewhere around 1600 now, but I'm not happy with it. The game is certainly playable, but I have everything on low and it looks TERRIBLE. The campaign map still stutters slightly, the occassional video is almost unwatchable (duelling videos I can't watch, and the last video in the RtI campaign....but all the others are fine, weird), and every now and again I get lag in battles.

When I was toying with settings, the game looked GREAT on high but was just unplayable.

Other than sending the computer (laptop, Sager) back for a %^&*#$@ $900 upgrade or building a desktop, anybody have any recommendations for settings?

Lower res.

Or deal with it. Mine is on low, but its just annoying...I tried a lower res, but it just looked worse. So I put up with lag, until I get a stable job and build my first ever custom built

[Daie123]

I am a great fan of the Total War series of games and it was total horror i discovered you need to use the highly annoying, buggy and unreliable steam to actually install the game and probably to play it. After having a terrible time getting the equally crappy Galactic Civilisation equivalent of steam (I can't remember its name as I have totally uninstalled it and no longer play any of those games which require it). Can I please beg the designers of the game to not use steam's - or at least offer those who buy the boxed game the option of avoiding it.

Perhaps this is suitable in countries which charge for bandwidth rather than downloading data, but in my country the updates can take several hours to download and it can end up costing me a fortune, which makes the game valueless.

I have always avoided steam based games, but my love of Total War overcome this - unfor7nbtaly the experience has been so awful I will probably return the game and will never purchase any others which require steam. (Or scream)

Now for some useful hints. If you are installing the game from the boxed version remeber to use the registration code at the rear of the game manual and not the special forces units. Once installed, it will take several hours to download the updates. You may find yourself getting a "The steam servers are too busy to handle my request?" before the installation occurs. Unfortunately you will have to keep on re-trying until the inital patches down load. The system may try and download the full game, which will take multiple hours if you don't live in the US or UK (or Korea). You will have to kill it and re-try. If you search for "empire total war The steam servers are too busy to handle my request?" on goggle you will find the web is filled with other folks who are experincing the same issue. You can find some useful hints.

My final comment is, if you find steams annoying, please voice your concern.

I found this post after having posted a quite similar rant on the Steam issues post (also stickied). I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one having problems with this very crappy installation process!

[Sun Tzui]

Having read this thread, i realise no one got the error i did.....and that is still puzzzling me!

I bought the boxed version on launch day, they delivered the code to me, but, due to work related issues i only got around to TRYING to instal the game today!

1.i put dvd1 in drive,

2.i install steam and log to account,

3.i enter activation code,

4.i get message "you're about to install empire total war" and go ,

5.i click next and get message "this game cannot be installed" ,

6.i come here and yell .

Sorry about the frustration, but its just one of those days......