cfexrun

Awesome! Thank you so much. I'm apparently blind AND dumb. Thanks again!

Maybe I'm just slow, but I can't seem to find the xbf editor anywhere. I keep finding dead links, but no program. Is it defunct, or did some alternative take its place? I can hex edit them, naturally, but I wanted to check out the alternative. Thanks!

Woops, didn't notice that. Still, in this case it was the only CD-Rom present, just with a very high drive letter. Anyway, sorry for the semi-redundant info. Nite all.

In case this helps anyone else I figured I'll post it here. As you may have seen in my previous thread, setting up and updating Windows Media Player cured my issue under XP. See http://www.dune2k.com/forum/index.php?topic=17405.0 for the grisly effort. Anyway, while helping a friend of mine with getting it installed I found another issue, as well as a fix for it. Symptoms: When running the installer, fixed or not, the option to install the shared internet components is missing. Also, install may be unnaturally quick, and the installed files do not run properly. Even after copying over files missing from the install and applying the 109 patch, and even using the no cd method, the game hangs while launching, usually without making it so far as the first screen. Solution: In this case my friend's CD drive was using the letter Z:, due to an odd install order and rampant usb storage devices, or maybe he's just crazy, I don't know. I used the computer manager, which is in Administrative Tools as Computer Management, to change the drive letter for it to E:. I still had to use the fixed install, but other than that everything has operated perfectly. Why did this work? Wish I could tell you. Later.

Shai-Hulud willing I'll have time to play online. Unfortunate that my long weekend free time was mostly spent on tracking this down. I mean, wow, that was heavy. I fix computers for a living, I have a pretty solid grasp on how OS components work, but I can't even begin to fathom what was going on there. Oh well. My roommate was having trouble with icons not showing up in his systray, and after some research I found a suggestion to turn off the UPnP interface. Not the service mind you, just the buttons, and lo, it was fixed. At least my issue had a theme to it, this was like changing a light bulb to fix your dryer. Anyway, hopefully I'll see you online as well. First I've got to get back up to speed, since the AI currently trods all over my tender parts, leaving me to imagine the horrors that would be visited upon me in a real match. Later!

Hot buttery goodness is mine! Well, so far so good anyway. It was the damndest thing. In my madness I thought perhaps it was having trouble with processing the sound files in the bag archives, so I extracted them and proceeded to play them. Since I'd reinstalled XP a few weeks ago, I hadn't ever played any media files, and Windows Media Player hadn't been setup. So I ran through the wizard, played some of the w files, and everything seemed ok with them, but I was struck by an odd idea. Could WMP have any impact on this?? So I tried it again, still with just one soundcard, and using -s, and while it still crashed I noticed two important things. One, it ran very smoothly. It wasn't bad before, but now it was running along brilliantly. Two, the crash didn't occur for until after about 20 minutes of game time. I was intrigued. Promptly I went to windows update and nabbed every media related update I could lay virtual hands to and made it mine. A couple of restarts later I tried Emperor again, same settings as above. An hour and half later I was crushed by the filthy Harkonnen... but no crash. Emboldened I removed the -s. I've played two skirmishes since then. I can't tell you the time involved because I became deeply engrossed. There's something to be said to coming back to a great game after a two or three year break. Anyway, I hope this helps others in my extremely unlikely situation. Later everyone!

Okie dokie. Just finished playing for about an hour and fifteen minutes without any trouble at all. With my sound disabled. Couldn't quite get it to run in vmware or virtual pc, mostly due the deep directx funkiness involved with doing that. So, any thoughts? I'd really rather not have to play with no sound, it dramatically diminishes the experience.

Howdy, Thanks for the replies. It's been very frustrating. It does seem to be a sound issue, though I'll be testing that further a little later today. As it is, with any sound device enabled, I can only play for about three minutes or so, max, before crashing. With both devices disabled I've run it for 15 minutes, so far, but had to take care of other things, so I couldn't try a full game. I've found nothing mentioning Emperor in any logs, just the generic fault in game.exe . My drivers and config all seem on the level. It's really weird, to me, that it doesn't matter which sound device is being used. Other games, notably Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War and Guild Wars, function just fine. On this same hardware, but a format and reinstall of XP ago, all of the Mechwarrior 4 games, and Il-2 Sturmovik also ran fine, so I don't believe any hardware faults are present. A couple things I'll be trying tonight is running the game in vmware and virtual pc, using 98SE, just to see, as well as leaving a sound device enabled in XP, but dropping the hardware acceleration and using the -s in Emperor. Does anyone know, definitively, if Emperor will make calls to DirectSound even when the -s is used? I can only assume it does, given that the game still crashes with it, but I'm uncertain. If anyone can suggest anything, I'll try it. Thanks!

Another little update. With both of my sound devices disable, I use that Envy24 card for my speakers and the Nvidia onboard for my headset, the game seems to run fine, but with either one enabled it crashes. This is regardless of whether I have the -s or not. The only difference that makes is that without it my computer reboots, and with it I get a crash to desktop in game.exe .

Ok, small update. Running the game in Win 95 compatibility mode with the sound disabled let's me play for about 8 minutes before I get a crash in game.exe . With the sound on it behaves the same. Without the compatibility mode on, disabling sound doesn't alter the time to crash in any appreicable way, but at least my computer isn't forced to reboot.

Just a tidbit, I saw this same behavior when I copied the direct3d DirectX 8.1 dlls into the Emperor directory to try and correct a different issue. Something that occurs to me, in your cases, is to try and downgrade DirectX, preferably to whatever your OS shipped with, then upgrading it again. It may also be worth your time to re-apply any service packs. My gut feeling is that you've ended up with a mixed bag of old and new DirectX files. Might also be a good idea to run the system file checker, which is sfc /scannow in the run box. Good luck.

Howdy, I've searched through here, but haven't found anything that quite matches what I'm seeing. Here's the gist of it: Running XP Pro, SP2. Had to install using the fixed install. Try to run the game and it hangs. Never loads, never even leaves the desktop. I get the icon at the bottom, and the process shows up as not responding in the task manager. I kill it, use -W to try windowed mode. Starts right up. Go into Skirmish to test things out and it reboots my system without an error, or entry in the event log. Ok. Try -W -s . Now, instead of rebooting, I get a generic exception in game.exe . Try patching, 108 and 109, and neither makes much difference. Try the no CD executable for 109, and it loads right up without being in windowed mode, but is otherwise the same. The crashes/reboots occur either right as I'm entering the battlefield or a couple of minutes into playing the skirmish. I haven't tried any other modes yet. Steps I've taken: Uninstalled and reinstalled all of my drivers. Reapplied SP2. Reinstalled Emperor many times. Uninstalled Kaspersky Anti Virus, just in case. Hardware- Athlon 3200+ 256MBx2 Mushkin 222 RAM DFI Ultra Infinity mobo. WD Hard drives Fx5600 Video Card Envy24 Sound Card 3Com Nic. 380 Watt Enermax Whisper PSU Background Processes: ALG.EXE CSRSS.EXE CTFMON.EXE DAEMON.EXE ENMIXCPL.EXE EXPLORER.EXE JUSCHED.EXE LOCATOR.EXE LSASS.EXE MAXTHON.EXE MDM.EXE NVMIXERTRAY.EXE PROCESSMASSACRE.EXE SERVICES.EXE SKYPE.EXE SMSS.EXE SPOOLSV.EXE SYSTEM WINLOGON.EXE Also attached is my Dxdiag info. Thanks to anyone who as any advice. I'm baffled. [attachment archived by Gobalopper]