Crash at Splash Screen

[bovi]

I remember someone having that error message earlier, but can't remember what the solution was. Have you run the validation tool?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Un-educated guess since I never had the issue:
1) Does this error actually occur when you attempt to run RTW by double-clicking the RTW.exe file in [Your choice of installation] ?

If 1 == yes :
2) Can you post a screenshot of the contents of [Your choice of installation] ? (What you see when you open the folder in Windows Explorer or some similar program.) IIRC there was an report once of someone who for one reason or another did not have all the libraries that deal with the sound aspect of the game (that is he/she missed some DLL files).

If 1== no :
3) Do you use any fancy audio playback equipment, such as a 5.1 or better surround sound ?
4) Does there exist a file called preferences.txt within the folder [Your choice of installation]\EB\preferences ?

[Belisarius Maximus]

I have indeed run the tool, but there (apparently) seems to be nothing wrong. EB is in fact currently uninstalled because I plan to try a second full re-installation of vanilla, its patches, and then install EB again in case a second go irons out any bugs that occured the first time round. However while it was installed I also checked the sound folders myself. Nothing seemed to be amiss, so I'm wondering if there any lingering files left over from previous mods that have not been deleted that are causing this problem.

[bovi]

I checked Google for the error message. Apparently a reinstall of RTW should fix things. Let's hope it does.

[Belisarius Maximus]

It worked! the second full re-install did the trick. The problem I think was that I have Gold edition II vanilla, and it is installed to a differently named directory than normal, so after the first re-install there were files everywhere. This time I did a search just to make sure. Thanks for the help.