Europa Barbarorum and possible software conflicts

[MoROmeTe]

So here's the problem: I installed and played both 0.81 and 1.0 on my system (XP OS). This last weekend my programming guru brother dumped a lot of software on the system, including but not limited to Visual Studio, .NET frameworks, various database converters and an SQL server installation.

Now every time I try and load up a game or start a new game I get a Visual Studio debugger window popping up telling me that RTW caused a error that needs to be debugged and shutting Rome down.

Question is: has anyone encountered this issue? Does anyone have any ideas on hoe to proceed?

[Tellos Athenaios]

No.

.NET framework, btw is part of the standard package you get with a MS OS.

Things you can try (no succes guaranteed, because me never had that problem):

-Look in the control panel for anything that may determine which programs are automatically turned on at start up. (In Vista the thing is called Windows Defender, but XP probably uses a different name for it. It should be a rather obvious name though.)
-Use that program to switch off Visual Studio. And make sure it doesn't start up automatically again.
-Tell your brother to quit messing with your files, it's damn annoying! (Seriously though, by the looks of it - you and your brother could share the PC happily if you both had your own accounts and did not install stuff on the Machine Account (installing for all users) but only installed stuff on your own accounts.)
-If you can't find it 'persuade' your brother to do it for you.

Alternatively:
-Each and every time you wish to run EB you will have to open the task manager first and then go to processes. There you search for any process related to Visual Studio and turn that off. (Which will be quite a search at first, but over time should become considerably easier - because you'll know what 'naming pattern' to look for.)
-Then run EB.

[Sakkura]

.NET framework, btw is part of the standard package you get with a MS OS.

AFAIK it's only included in Vista. With older Windows versions you can install it for free though.
At least, I had to manually install it on my Windows XP system.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Oh well, you don't need it for anything whatsoever anyway- because when you do need anything of the kind you will use a better (more secure) alternative. (IIRC .NET is a way to remotely connect one PC with another, used for the server thingy for instance.)

So just turn it off.

[bovi]

I would suggest searching the net for how to turn the feature off. I imagine it will be quite too much pain to deinstall every time you want to play .

[Tellos Athenaios]

@Bovi: you needn't deinstall everything - as pointed out you can turn things off, through the managing tool described above & taskmanger. Process tab is a powerful tool!

[bovi]

I meant to deinstall visual studio, not everything. If the ways you've detailed works, excellent, but if not I'm sure the almighty internet knows some other way.

[iamphet]

You can try to turn off Visual Studio's Just-In-Time Debugging (in VS2005 it's in Tools->Options->Debugging->Just-In-Time.
Although I suspect you will start getting access violations with RTW :)
Anyway, worth trying IMHO.

[MoROmeTe]

Back to report how things went...

First off all me and brother have separate profiles yet there are things like Visual Studio and SQL Server that automatically install into all profiles as far as I see.

First I tried to disable the remote debugging in VS. No deal... As said above I began getting error messages that RTW cause access violations. So I resorted to unistalling VS. No deal. I still got the access violations messages, every time I started or loaded a game. Then I turned off and disabled, in the processes page, all related to error debugging and mdm. Still I could not play. I even uninstalled EB and RTW and put them back on from scratch. No deal...

My father suggested that I use his account to try and play. And, behold, RTW worked as it should. By now the only ideas I had were: 1) play EB by choosing "Run as" and using my father's profile or 2) reinstall Windoze.

I resorted to 1 as it implies much less hassle... but why EB behaves as it does on my profile is still anyones guess.

PS: Using my brother's profile RTW generates error messages. Also using a new profile, created by cloning my father's profile, RTW generates errors. Computer geekiness makes me still think about this, yet no suitable explanation emerges.

[iamphet]

Usually AV messages contain information about faulted module.

Perhaps RTW picks up different dlls in different profiles
Do all users have the same privileges?
Also I would compare values of PATH environment variable among user profiles. Since there are user and system vars, it is easier to compare output of set PATH command.

[MoROmeTe]

Well, all accounts are marked system administrator...

I do not know what you mean by PATH variables.

Also if anyone knows how I can compare two different user profiles (what system variables they use, activated processes and such) please do tell.

[bovi]

Start=>Run.
In the box, type cmd.
On the prompt, type set.
Find the PATH in the list.

Repeat with the other user logged in. Compare.