DurhamTiger

Join Date 07/2007

GC2 won't launch after update

Been playing and enjoying GC2 on and off for over a year. Recently had to do a reinstall of Win XP, and then GC2, and updated to 1.5 something via the old SD Central. Fortunately I keep separate OS and app/data partitions so most of my saved data, ships, games etc. were not lost.

However, today I got an email about the update to GC2 2.0. Ran Impulse to get the update. Afterwards, starting GC2 produced a small dialog box stating that I needed to run setup.exe from the CD. So I ended up reinstalling from the CD, which is a pretty early version. Used SD Central again to grap the update to 1.5, but did not do the 2.0 update. So now when I run GC2, whether from icon or from the GC2Launch.exe, the initial start screen comes up but when I click "Play the Game" it essentially quits.

Thanks for any assistance.

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Also, tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling, and no change.

Seems like the 2.0 update did something that has been left behind and is messing things up. ???

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

Just to preface--there's no 2.0 update for Dread Lords, which it sounds like you have--the minor update that dropped alongside 2.0 for TA/DA is just Vista compatibility stuff for the most part. So if you're not on Vista, you don't need it.

In any case, post the debug.err file's contents from the folder where the game is installed at, it should give details about what happened when it tried to start.

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Quoting kryo,

reply 2

Thanks. I do have just Dread Lords (been meaning to look into getting a combo TA/DA pack), and I didn't really look closely at update details, just ran Impulse and let it do its thing.

In any case, post the debug.err file's contents from the folder where the game is installed at, it should give details about what happened when it tried to start.

Well, this is interesting - really nothing there, and what's there is WAY out of date:

+++
Debug Message: Version v1.5 last updated on: Thu Jan 11 13:39:19 2007
+++

That certainly seems odd, as I've reinstalled GC2 3 times in the last 2 weeks. The date on the file itself is 11/14/2008. (And my PC's date is correct.) That date is probably when I first installed the 1.5 update, and there have been plenty of crashes since then.

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this date is (as it's written) : the time of the last update NOT the date when you last runned it

Debug Message: Version v1.5 last updated on: Thu Jan 11 13:39:19 2007
Debug Message: GalCiv2 is activated.
Debug Message: Checking DX Version.
Debug Message: *********DXDiag info follows.*********
System Info
Time: 11/14/2008, 20:30:40 <<<===== this is the last run date

(mind you, I fell into the "trap" myself when I first read your message )

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Quoting whismerhill,

reply 4

this date is (as it's written) : the time of the last update NOT the date when you last runned it

I'm quite aware of that, and in either case it's not accurate - as I mentioned I've uninstalled/reinstalled/updated a few times since then. There's nothing else in the file, just the one line. I'm mainly surprised that nothing has been written to the file since that date, as I mentioned there have been plenty of crashes.

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as you may notice the update date is fixed (mine is exactly the same) so it's just the intrinsic date of the update and not the date at which you did update ...

in any case, you may try to use the "debug" option to add additional debug information to the debug.err

https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Command_line_options

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Ah, thanks for the clarification on that date.

So I made a shortcut to GC2Launch.exe with the debug option on the command, as you suggested. (Target = "D:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\GC2Launch.exe" debug; I do have GC2 installed on a D: partition as I've always had. Out of curiousity I searched the Registry for references to "C:\Program Files\Stardock" and didn't find anything.)

At any rate, running that I still get nothing extra in the debug.err file (though the file's date modified does get updated) other than what I posted above. Seems like the launcher is not even successfully starting the actual app - if I watch processes in task manager, I see GC2Launch.exe but then nothing when I click Play.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

If the debug writes with only one line, then it's likely an activation issue that's hanging it up (as that's the next line). Best bet is to contact support@stardock.com for further help with that.

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Good news. I uninstalled again, reinstalled from the CD and this time tried updating via Impulse instead of SDC.

I'm up and running. The update that came down was 1.53 (for Dread Lords), and in addition to working, I see some graphics updates which is nice. Very relieved to be able to dominate the galaxy once again!

Thanks to all for suggestions.

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