Rome crashes on restart

[Hambut_bulge]

Wonder if anyone can help with a rather irritating issue I'm experiencing in RTW lately. Basically I can launch and play the game with no problems. If I exit the game, I then cannot relaunch unless I completely shut down and restart windows. The splash appears briefly and then I get "RomeTW.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close, etc etc." I've recently upgraded my graphics card to a Radeon 850 and I'm running the latest Catalyst drivers (6.1). The problem did appear to start after this upgrade. I've uninstalled/reinstalled Rome. I've even done a complete reinstall of Windows in case some driver was conflicting with an older version. Nothing. Oh, and this occurs with vanilla RTW as well as 1.5. Has anyone encountered anything remotely similar, or knows of a workaround. Because I'm slowly being driven round the bend! Thanks

Forgot to add: this also applies to BI as well...

[Monarch]

Does it apply to any other games you have? None TW ones.

[Hambut_bulge]

No, unfortunately its just Rome. I wonder if its something to do with the intro movie and Windows Media Format 9, since RTW is the only game I have which uses that and essentially its the logo screen and movie that its trying to load when it crashes

[Atilius]

If this is the case, you might want to use the -nm switch to start RTW. It turns off the startup movies and animations on the transition screens. Bring up your RTW icon, go to Properties, and add -nm after "C:\...\RomeTW.exe" so you have "C:\...\RomeTW.exe" -nm.

[Oaty]

If you are experiencing a severe memory leak, this could be causing the problem. hit ctrl alt del and see if RTW is running under processes. Cancel the RTW process and then it should restart fine.

[Cras]

sounds to me not a memory problem but somehow the laterst drivers of your video card make it impossible for the program to end.
Did you try the task manager to see if it is still running? Otherwise you can close it like that..

I would not install the new drivers and would email your card supplier.. it looks like the problem is there.

[Hambut_bulge]

Atilius: Thanks for that, didn't know that was how you could disable the intro. Unfortunately it had no effect on my little problem.

Oaty/Cras: I've been keeping an eye on process explorer (I was recommended by a work colleague to use that instead of task manager) and it appears that Rome has shut down successfully. However there's possibly some other stuff which may be significant. Under the entry for RomeTW.exe there's a child process getting opened called '~e5.0001'. This is from the "C:\Documents and Settings\Paul Bambury\Local Settings\Temp\" directory. In process explorer it has a description of 'Cleanup' and the associated company name is 'Macrovision'. ~e5.0001 itself is a file that appears to be getting created when I start windows. I've deleted it and when I reboot its back again. Opening this file in Notepad reveals mostly uninterpretable ASCII. However there are some lines of potential interest which I've cut and pasted below:

__GLOBAL_HEAP_SELECTED __MSVCRT_HEAP_SELECT ÿÿÿÿ þb@ ÿÿÿÿ ‡c@ runtime error
TLOSS error
SING error
DOMAIN error
R6028
- unable to initialize heap
R6027
- not enough space for lowio initialization
R6026
- not enough space for stdio initialization
R6025
- pure virtual function call
R6024
- not enough space for _onexit/atexit table
R6019
- unable to open console device
R6018
- unexpected heap error
R6017
- unexpected multithread lock error
R6016
- not enough space for thread data

abnormal program termination
R6009
- not enough space for environment
R6008
- not enough space for arguments
R6002
- floating point not loaded
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library

Runtime Error!

Program: ... <program name unknown>

BTW I have a 1Gb of RAM and according to process explorer just 313Mb of that is being used by Windows. Launching Rome to the main menu increases that 454Mb and when exiting it drops back to 327Mb.

There's also a directory containing some temporary files which has a very similar name, '~e5.0001.dir.0000'. This directory appears to be getting created by RomeTW.exe. Upon exiting RTW, both of these processes disappear, the directory '~e5.0001.dir.0000' is deleted. When I attempt a relaunch the process RomeTW.exe is created and also creates the child process ~e5.0001 again, with the directory. And the crash then deletes it.

I've googled for ~e5.0001 and there's a whole raft of issues that this little chap appears (or is getting the blame for) to be causing. But little in the way of concrete proof. I don't suppose either of you could have a look and see if a similar process is being run on your machines when you start Rome. Thanks.

[DVX BELLORVM]

I'm pretty sure that ~e5.0001 is part of protection against software piracy. Do you perhaps use a no-cd patch, or some kind of virtual cd tool (like DeamonTools)? If so , that may be the problem...

[Hambut_bulge]

I'm pretty sure that ~e5.0001 is part of protection against software piracy. Do you perhaps use a no-cd patch, or some kind of virtual cd tool (like DeamonTools)? If so , that may be the problem...

And that's it. Uninstall Daemon Tools and it works as before. And I would like to hastily point out that I am in possession of properly bought copies of Rome and BI, and I am not in the habit of using no-cd 'patches'! But I do have (and have had) Daemon Tools (its a handy little tool) installed for some time. Curious, because that's not caused a problem before - with anything. Shall have investigate that further. Thank you for all for your help. Case closed!

[DVX BELLORVM]

And I would like to hastily point out that I am in possession of properly bought copies of Rome and BI, and I am not in the habit of using no-cd 'patches'!

Well, I never meant to question legality of your copy...
Glad I could help...

[Hambut_bulge]

Well, I never meant to question legality of your copy...
Glad I could help...

Didn't mean that to imply you were. Thought I'd better just make it clear in case anyone else deemed the thread to be heading into dodgy waters! Thanks again