fresh install of windows, sotsII no longer loads.

[mccaber]

My c drive crashed on me, steam was on a separate hard drive and for the most part my steam games automatically corrected to work in the fresh install of windows. SotsII however wont load. I've gone so far as to delete local content and re-download / do a fresh install. Steam does its bit saying "loading sotsII" or something similar. The game never loads though. Since I have deleted the game and reinstalled I'm not sure how to proceed. DirectX is installed and other current gen games are working, just not this one. Can someone point me in the right direction to fix this? I'm running windows 7 premium, and the hardware is the same as before the crash except for a new c drive. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Edit: Found another thread suggesting running dotNetFx40_Client_x86_x64 from a folder with the same name and then reboot. Ill update after the reboot.

Edit 2: This works.

[Profound_Darkness]

I've noticed that steam seems to (sometimes) cause some apps to end up in windows compatibility mode automatically (including itself with l4d2 as one example). This seems to cause some interference with those programs running.

When correcting steam having compatibility flags set in the registry I noticed the dotnet installer with sots2 also having compatibility flags set... Something to do with UAC, elevating the steam installer, and installing additional components. Somewhat more sots2 specific - Might also have something to do with systems that haven't been to windows update yet... (ie not overly common)

[Vasco]

I'm in exactly the same boat,

I take it the fix was to drop a copy of the dotnet installation file into a folder called 'dotNetFx40_Client_x86_x64' and run it from there, if so it didn't work.

[Nspace]

When Steam installs the game, it creates folders for the prerequisites along with the game files. You should go to each of the following folders and run these files:

Code: Select all

Direct X - Steam/steamapps/common/sword of the stars ii/directx/DXSETUP.exe
Visual C (x86) - Steam/steamapps/common/sword of the stars ii/msvc2010sp1/vcredist_x86.exe
Visual C (x64) - Steam/steamapps/common/sword of the stars ii/msvc2010sp1/vcredist_x64.exe
.net 4 - Steam/steamapps/common/sword of the stars ii/netfx4cp/dotNetFx40_Client_x86_x64.exe 

Make sure to run the Direct X and .net 4 installers even if you already have them installed. Both of those installers will only update the needed files and will correct any problems they find.

[Vasco]

I have installed all 4 files (and the game itself) several times and obtained all the updates available from Windows Update.

When I start the game, all I get is about one second of the opening video (Powered by Gamespy) in the window then the game CTDs. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 on a 64-bit rig. I've tried changing all the available settings, including uncheking the 'Prefer 64-bit' and all to no avail. I have also searched the forums for all the posts relating to the Dotnet file and tried everything suggested.

EDIT: Still no joy. I've tried running the mars.exe from both the x32 and x64 directories and generated logs with the following text (identical apart from the environment):

T (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [app] MARS2 64-bit Environment
T (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [app] Last built on Mar 9 2012 16:15:27
T (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [app] CWD:
T (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [app] E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sword of the stars ii\bin\x64
T (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [app] Args:
T (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [app] E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sword of the stars ii\bin\x64\mars.exe
T (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [diag] Initializing telemetry...
W (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [diag] Failed to start telemetry (1).
W (2012/03/20 23:47:10) [app] Invalid game root directory:

Does this make the problem any clearer?

[Vasco]

OK, I've found another log file under C:\Users\<name>\Local\Sword of the Stars II\log with the following text:

ST 03/23/2012 03:49:46 [] Preparing game state Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.SplashState for transition from nothing.
ST 03/23/2012 03:49:47 [] Entering game state Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.SplashState.
ST 03/23/2012 03:49:48 [] Exiting game state Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.SplashState.
SW 03/23/2012 03:49:48 [] System.Xml.XmlException: Root element is missing.
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ThrowWithoutLineInfo(String res)
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseDocumentContent()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.Load(XmlDocument doc, XmlReader reader, Boolean preserveWhitespace)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(Stream inStream)
at Kerberos.Sots.Data.Xml.XmlHelper.Load(XmlDocument document, IFileSystem fileSystem, String path)
at Kerberos.Sots.Data.WeaponFramework.WeaponXmlUtility.LoadWeaponFromXml(String filename, Weapon& w)
at Kerberos.Sots.ShipFramework.WeaponLibrary.CreateLogicalWeaponFromFile(App app, String weaponFile, Int32 uniqueWeaponID)
at Kerberos.Sots.ShipFramework.WeaponLibrary.Enumerate(App app)
at Kerberos.Sots.AssetDatabase..ctor(App app)
at Kerberos.Sots.App.Initialize()
at Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.SplashState.OnEnter()
at Kerberos.Sots.GameState.Enter()
at Kerberos.Sots.GameStateMachine.Update()
at Kerberos.Sots.App.Update()

Does that help?

[silvaril]

Heya

Please use the 32bit version of SotS2 from that directory structure.

Let me know if the 32bit version doesn't work.

[Vasco]

Thanks for the response.

Tried sots2.exe in the x86 folder - same CTD. Tried executing mars.exe (32-bit) directly, it failed and generated the following log:

T (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [app] MARS2 32-bit Environment
T (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [app] Last built on Mar 21 2012 19:24:55
T (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [app] CWD:
T (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [app] E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sword of the stars ii\bin\x86
T (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [app] Args:
T (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [app] E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sword of the stars ii\bin\x86\mars.exe
T (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [diag] Initializing telemetry...
W (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [diag] Failed to start telemetry (1).
W (2012/03/24 01:33:50) [app] Invalid game root directory:

[silvaril]

Heya

Nifty.

Please copy the SotS2 Game Directory to a new location outside of the Program Files areas.

Then try running the game from the new copy.


My initial concern was more to do with the location of the Steam sub folders under the 32bit Program Files directory, while you were trying to run the 64bit version.
This would have made some sense to me, given that 64bit executables in that...structure...tend to look for stuff under \Program Files\ rather than \Program Files (x86)\

Moving the game outside of the Steam folders all together still allows it to run, which is how I get mine going on the SSD without dropping all of Steam onto the SSD...
Sure, and I could do soft linking, but the likelihood of things breaking goes up when crossing Disks like that...

[Vasco]

Hi,

I copied the game directory (sword of the stars ii) to the top of the E drive directory structure as requested and attempted to run the game from both the 32-bit and 64-bit executables - the game failed to run as previously. I then cut and pasted the directory into the top of the C drive and tried again to see whether that would make a difference and repeated the exercise - it didn't either.

[Korgan]

Hey Vasco, out of curiosity, what video card are you using? Probably not the issue, but just in case...
Also don't bother running the mars.exe that will always fail as you're missing needed arguments for it to run properly, so you should only use the sots2.exe
Try this as well if you haven't, completely close down Steam so it's no longer running, then try running either version of sots2.exe from their directories.
posting a dxdiag here might help as well, if that didn't work, as your issue is definitely not the norm.

[Vasco]

Korgan,

I'm running 2 x Nvidia GTX580 (driver version 295.73) in 2D Surround to drive 3 monitors. I shut down Steam and ended the Steam32.exe process in task manager - no change; the game continues to CTD as described previously.

My DXDIAG results are below:

DxDiag.txt

[Astatine]

Vasco, when the game worked previously on a computer and has since stopped working despite doing a "verify game cache" in Steam the problem is usually related to one of the files the game creates after installation.

Removing the player profile and saved games will usually make it work again. Either delete them if they are not valuable or move them well away from their normal location (another occasionally reported cause of problems is putting extra files near the profile or saves). Try to give the game a blank slate - based on the logfile you posted with the message about XML I think that will probably work.

Your attempt to run mars.exe directly failed because mars.exe requires a long command line of arguments which the launcher usually passes to it. If you want to run it directly you have to provide those arguments yourself. Without them it will simply complain as it did in the log you posted. You can find examples of the arguments in the logfile of a successful launch.

So take it back to basics - clean out the saves and profile, do a "verify game cache" and launch the game through Steam. It should work.

If it doesn't, another common problem with a re-imaged computer is that the two libraries SotS depends on may be in a state where the usual installer package that ships with SotS isn't capable of correctly updating them. This can usually be fixed by downloading the installers directly from Microsoft. In a few cases the libraries have to be completely un-installed before installing again, but luckily that usually isn't necessary because it is a tedious procedure.

[MrScribbler]

Vasco, I dealt with a similar problem in another thread. Nextek (from Kerberos), like Astatine, suggested deleting the profile. Although that didn't work, it got me to thinking about fixing by deleting the least amount of information. So I deleted the entire /bin folder and verified game cache. Worked like a charm.

The thread can be found here.