MTW2 CTD (Unspec Err) when entering Battle Screen WORKAROUND

[TechStrider]

20070225
Medieval 2 Total War and CTD crash to desktop when entering Battle Screen with Unspecified Error

A Workaround

I have been reading the posts on several boards for the last couple of weeks. Specifically for the CTD or crash to desktop issue when entering battles as opposed to the campaign portion. The one you get when choosing to enter a battle and when the loading bar at the bottom should start to move and you crash out to the desktop with the Unspecified error. My son is the primary player of the game but in trying to troubleshoot this problem I started playing the game and now I am hooked as well.

Like many other posters, everything was running fine and many hours of successful game time in campaign or battle mode were logged. Quite suddenly Ian was crashed out of an intense battle with a CTD. Very unhappy. Really and especially very unhappy when it was discovered that ALL attempts to enter the battle screen also crashed the game. All saved games and any new ones were affected. Dad got asked for help.

I went at with the usual tools. Updated video drivers, no help. Updated sound drivers, no help. Changed from an Nvidia card to an ATI card and completely changed drivers, no help. Ran the latest February 2007 Microsoft Directx Redistribution package for DirectX 9.0c, no help. Very bummed out.

Started reading the forums. Discovered threads about elephants. Found out from Ian that, yes, elephants were for the first time entering into the battle and that is when we had this crash. (VERY important to note this a bit later in this document because you may need to do the workaround over again). This all led me to understand how the crash came about but left me wondering how to fix it. Continued working on the video front and changing settings in the video options: shader level, shadows, detail levels, AA, in short all the likely suspects. Still crashing. Rebooting often to be sure that we were getting fresh starts. Then I made a mistake.

We use XP Professional. Service Pack 2, all chosen updates. My son has his own user account so that he can set things up as he wants. I log in as him when trying fixes on Medieval 2. I messed up and logged in as myself out of reflex. Suddenly Medieval 2 battles worked! It took us a while to realize what had happened because the last change I made had not worked and after the usual CTD I had rebooted. The magical fix seemed to have no reason to take effect other than yet another reboot. Only after quitting the game and dropping back to the normal desktop on purpose for once did we realize that we were on my desktop not his. So we logged out of my account and logged in on his. Bang. Medieval was still crashing. Log out of Ian’s account and into mine: works just fine. Wow.

A few days have now gone by. In the meantime, we have discovered a few things. It is absolutely still possible to crash the game. It often happens with elephants and with elephants and walls and units on those walls. Sometimes the crash will break Medieval completely – this means that from then on ANY attempt to load the battle screen will crash – and sometimes not. When you do have the full bad news mess up MTW2 completely CTD problem you are hosed. For that user. And therein lies the workaround. We now have a Medieval user account. When playing MTW2 we only log in as that user. Do NOT bother to make that user pretty or waste any time customizing it. Because when you get the full on nasty crash that user is worthless and will be abandoned. We make a new user, MTW2_2 or _3 or whatever, and play it from there. This has worked this way perfectly. Not very elegant, but VERY VERY effective.

I am not going to try to analyze what is happening here. The Total War programmers are probably on this. It likely has to do with temp files that DX9 establishes for each user account and I can’t pinpoint. Someone with more knowledge may reveal to us all the mysterious file or registry entry in question. It is going to have something that is based on a user account level. But, the solution does give us a workaround and makes sense of the different ways we hear of this particular problem.

In short, this did not have to do with a reinstall or driver updates. This has to do with values being used by MTW2 and since I do not see anything that the programmers are using on a by user account level for MTW2 it likely has to do with DX9 which does carry that info by user and how it is being used by MTW2. We’ll let the programmers solve this one but for now, we can keep playing the great game without fear because we have a workaround by creating a new user and loading the game right back up.

Hope this helps,
John

[Martok]

Welcome to the Org, TechStrider!

Unfortunately, you've posted this in the forum for MTW 1, not Medieval 2. No worries though; I'll move it for ya.

[sapi]

Interesting.

No ideas why this might be the case?

It seems very strange!

[vonsch]

I had this battle-screen entry CTD after doing some minor modding. It was a syntax error in one of the files... the unit one, I think. It turned up in the error log which I had enabled.

I had a typo, a period instead of a comma.

[todorp]

I have the same problem and even reinstalled Windows XP. Finaly found the first proven problem: my RAM wasn't good enough.

Did you eliminate a possible hardware problem first?

MTW2 is a _BIG_ CPU and RAM user and it will flush out all the possible harware problems which your system might have.

There are many stress test utilities http://www.anyfreeware.com/system_utilities/freeware_for_system_utilities_diagnostics.htm around. I used and recommend http://www.memtest86.com/ and Microsoft http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

[TechStrider]

20070301

In trying to be clear I may have buried the core bit of information a bit deep. I'll try again.

Once the M2TW installation is whacked (and this has happened twice now during the period of the Timurids and their elephants) and it appears that the installation of M2TW is whacked. Change things to your hearts content and it is still whacked. Make a new XP User Account and with all other settings the same M2TW will now work for that XP User Account. This is still on the same M2TW install. This means that the M2TW install was not bad since both XP User Accounts use the same M2TW install.

Very clearly now: If you log out of that XP User Account and into the old whacked XP User Account it is still whacked. Log back into the new XP User Account and the game plays just fine. NO changes to hardware or drivers or M2TW settings. None.

Further proof: It happened again, also during the period of the Timurids. Created New XP User Account "M2TW User 2" and it worked fine again. Back to XP User Account "M2TW User 1" and it is whacked. This means that there were no XP user settings that had been messed up in our original user account as both NEW XP User Accounts inherited the same default settings.

Summary: This is a response to an issue we have experienced and found reference to on the boards where the campaign game works fine but any effort to enter a battle screen dies with a CTD before the scrolling window at the bottom of the battle load screen will fill. In both cases we have seen it the elephants and the Timurids are involved initially. Once the whack has occurred you cannot load ANY battle scene. Even a custom battle 1 unit vs 1 unit will CTD. The workaround as we presented it proves that this is NOT a hardware or drivers issue.

The problem appears to lie in the combination of M2TW and its relationship to the discrete XP User Account. From what I see the vector may be with the settings that DX9 holds by XP User since I do not see what M2TW holds by XP User Account. (I have made some searches in the registry and do not see discrete user settings for M2TW). Just what is going on is a programmer issue; from a game player point of view this workaround is a way to keep playing a great game.

Is this clearer?

Thanks,
John

[Foz]

Seems pretty clear to me. The short short version:

M2TW's Elephant crash issue can tweak windows XP user-dependent information of some sort, causing continued game crashes with no known recourse (as yet) for that user account. Other accounts will play the game fine, which is both the workaround, and the evidence that the continued trouble is tied to the user account that experienced the initial crash.

@TechStrider: Could you try making a backup of your registry and keeping it around until the next time the issue pops up? Then you could reinstate the old registry that you know existed when your currently in-use account (M2TW User 2, wasn't it?) was able to play the game... and you'd then know if the problem stems from the registry or not. Obviously if it is from the registry, using the backup version of it would make the game run correctly again on the account where you just had the crash. I realize either way that registry reversion isn't too helpful a solution to anyone, but narrowing down the problem could be helpful to the devs or us in figuring out what's going wrong here.

[Whacker]

Very interesting behavior. Something you may want to try is ccleaner, located here: http://www.ccleaner.com/ . Basically it's a freeware system cleaner, it'll clear out your temp file areas like your recycle bin, temp internet files, temp app files, and a whole slew of other things, just be careful and RTFM as it can sometimes clear out stuff you don't want removed, like cookies or whatnaught. The other thing it has that I love is the registry cleaner, run that a few times in succession and it works great, I've never had it break anything for me but use with care. Why not give this a go after your game goes borked and see if this doesn't help fix it? Also, have you tried installing the latest drivers, or if you have reinstalling them and possibly DX9.0c?

[TechStrider]

Thank you Foz and Whacker.
Good ideas from both of you on approaching the registry. Since this is something that the programmers have to attend to I will not likely spend a whole bunch of time more on. The workaround solves all.

And, not trying to nitpick, but Whacker: please note that I originally tried all the updates and DX9.0c February2007 Redistribution. None of these worked. With all of these in place, a whacked User Account stays whacked and, a good user stays good. You can log in and out of the two accounts - both made with default User settings - and one will be good and one will be bad. The drivers installations and DX9.0c redist update made no change.

I do think that there are going to be values in the User Account and agree that the registry will likely hold the clues but I am hoping that the developers are working on the real internal fix. I am having way to much fun with the game to spend playing time on trying to debug this completely. The clues are here for the pros.

Thanks,
John