MTW VI Crashes

[unseelie craig]

Hello Everyone.
Nice to meet all of you. I NEED help, please.
I just got the Total War: Eras package a few days ago. I also just got a new computer with a widescreen monitor.

I have installed all the games in my new computer. Rome & Shogun both seem to start fine and I can get into both games. But after installing MTW VI i seem to be getting issues that I cannot figure out how to solve.

When the game starts, right before the movie is about to play, a runtime error comes up and minimizes the game. It doesnt totally crash the game, as i am able to maximize it again, and get into the main menu (but the movie is obviously skipped). It seems something with the movie is not agreeing with my system.
Does anyone know what might be wrong?
The first thing I did was update my video card drivers (after recalling the problems I experienced in trying to run the original MTW when i got it 3 years ago)
this is the error:

RUNTIME ERROR
R6025
Pure Virtual Function Call


Now for problem #2:

The game doesnt totally crash after the runtime error... as i am able to get back into the main menu but when I try to start a campaign, the game TOTALLY CRASHES in the "loading screen" right before the campaign map can open. The interesting thing is, that I can go into a quick battle perfectly fine with no crashes... it only seems to happen when trying to open the "campaign" screen.

Anyone know what might be the problem?

I am at wits end after screwing around with this for the last 6 days.
Both Rome and Shogun seem to be fine... both of their initial movies played... and I was able to get into both games... So as far as i can tell they dont have serious problems. But, MTW Viking Invasion is the main one I want to play now (silly me never got it when it came out years ago!) and i have been looking forward to it. But I got to say, that i am so frustrated that I am going to return the game if i cannot get it working. So, if anyone has good ideas or knows specifically what is wrong, then please respond.

thanks!
Craig

[Celtic_Guardian]

Im not much of a tech person but someone else might be, what video card are you using?

[professorspatula]

Typically the game crashing when attempting to load the campaign map is a video driver issue. Those people with Nvidia cards and drivers above the 61.xx series tend to get crashes and problems like you mentioned, although I'm not sure if ATI users are affected. Using an older driver or forcing your card to use 2x Anti-aliasing (perhaps even above 2x) for some reason often prevents the crash from happening so often. I certainly found it true for me.

It's a little disappointing they didn't try and fix the problem with the re-release of MTW when potentially a large number of people may experience the crash issue. Still, I suppose Total War Eras wasn't about spending money to fix things, it was purely about making money.

[naut]

GeForce users with older generation graphics cores (5xxx and earlier) should stick with older drivers (v61.77 or earlier), those with newer cores (6xxx and up) should try manually setting anti-aliasing to 2X. Those tips seem to work for most folks experiencing graphics problems with Medieval - Total War.

That should allow for campaign map playing.

[unseelie craig]

Im not much of a tech person but someone else might be, what video card are you using?

it is a new HP 7580 computer with a GeForce 7300 LE card

[unseelie craig]

Thanks professorspatula and Rythmic!

I changed the anit-aliasing to 2x and that seems to work for the campaign map! so that part is seems to be solved... i can now at least get into the game!
The beginning movie still crashes with that Runtime Error R6025. Any ideas what might fix that? unless there is some bug in the program or installation?

Yeah, im sure it was about making money.... that and convenience. I never had any of the other games... only MTW... so it was kind of nice when this package came out... especially with all the expansions and the patches.

much appreciation for the help! :)

[Geezer57]

Use Notepad to create an empty text file named "skipcredits.txt" (without the quote marks) and place it in the root of your Medieval - Total War folder. That will prevent the opening movie from playing - sounds like you may be having a problem with your media player settings.

[unseelie craig]

what kind of media player settings do you think?
i just got this computer 2 weeks ago, and media player 10 is on there.
is there anything that i should change to help the movie play?

its not a huge deal, because at least i can play the game now. but i should be able to watch the beginning movie. I never had issues with the movie in my old MTW. So any suggestions or setting changes you might have would be great.

thanks!

[little_firey_one]

Hey, The exact same problem is happening to me. When i start Medieval, i see the total war screen, than it closes to desktop with the error. I also just bought an HP computer with a 7300LE card. I even had the crashes after clicking on campaign. I fixed that the same way you did. This is also the Eras package (gf bought it for me when i got my new rig) However, i've never seen the opening movie and now am slighltly disappointed. If you find out how to fix it, let me know.

[Martok]

To all:

I'm going to repeat something professorspatula said, because it's worth emphasizing: If you've recently upgraded your video drivers, rolling them back to an older version can solve the problem. I'm not saying it's 100% guaranteed to work, but switching back to an older driver has fixed the MTW crash issue for a lot of people (including myself).

[unseelie craig]

I tried rolling back the driver update from the july 2006 to the march 2006 update... it was one of the first things i did (after initially updating it!), and it didnt work :(

looks like we are in the same boat, lil firey one! :(

i thought maybe i would need to update the media player codecs... but when clicking the "search for player updates" on media player i get this wierd error box.... i will have to check it out when i get home tonight, and post it when i see what it is again.

like geezer57 said above.... im thinking it is some sort of media player settings... because it only affects the movie.

[unseelie craig]

when clicking the "search for player updates" on media player i get this message that says:
"a more recent version of windows media player is already running on your computer. setup cannot continue."

it makes no sense.... if i had the most recent updates... shouldnt it just say there are no more updates?!?

so... im not sure what is up with media player.... but i presume it is the cause of the movie crashing right before it starts up.

at least setting the anti-aliasing to 2x in the video card solved the crashing right before the campaign screen loaded. I guess so far, it is good enough to play the game.... i wont worry about the movie, unless someone comes up with some other ideas.

[blahblahblah]

I don't know if anyone else experiences crashing right in the middle of the campaign, but I do all the time. Even with anti aliasing 2x and v1.1 patch. Anyone can solve that problem or is everyone playing under that condition and not complaining about it? My graphic card is Nvidia 6200.

[Arciel]

Looks like I'm not the only one experiencing problems... When I downloaded and installed the patch for MTW(not VI), my game crashed when I clicked on the "end year" button. I'm not sure what causes this problem as my system was previously running MTW perfectly fine... can anyone help??

[Matador]

[QUOTE=unseelie craig]when clicking the "search for player updates" on media player i get this message that says:
"a more recent version of windows media player is already running on your computer. setup cannot continue."
QUOTE]

I was looking on the windows customer support center (assuming that you have XP) and I came across this:
"If you try to play certain games on a Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1)-based computer, you may experience any one or more of the following symptoms:• The game may stop responding (hang).
• The game may quit unexpectedly (crash) when the introductory video clip starts.
• You may receive an error message that is similar to one of the following error messages:
Video not available - cannot find 'VIDS:IV50' decompressor
Failed (hr=0x80004002) in pVW-> put_Owner((OAHWND)HWnd)"

It sounds like the problem you are having. The fix they have is the following:
RESOLUTION
To resolve this problem, obtain and install the 327979 recommended update.

If you want to read the whole article go to www.microsoft.com and do a site search for 327979. It should be the first article on the list. If that doesn't work then try browsing the microsoft support center or asking the support people directly. Good Luck.

[Andres]

Well, I don't know if it's the same problem, but I experienced a CTD when trying to load a campaign.

Setting both campaign map as battles in the same resolution in the video options fixed the problem for me.

Hope it helps anybody out there.

[R'as al Ghul]

Have you guys tried the compatibility mode?
You know, right click the .exe file (or the shortcut),
select properties, "compatibility mode" control panel.
Set it to Win98.
Also the movies need to be associated with WMP.