| Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Tue, 23 December 2003 20:01  |
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I have a player in a game I am hosting who has a problem with Stars exiting a few seconds after he starts it.
This happens with 2.6J RC3 (fresh download), with no stars.ini file, even when starting with -s and -m options.
Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be ?
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Wed, 24 December 2003 07:44  |
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| LEit wrote on Wed, 24 December 2003 02:27 |
Does it happen no matter which game he opens?
If he can get into another game, set the fleets to sort by ID. I've noticed some strange stuff when you sort by anything else and then open a game. It sorts by the same values for all games you open (settings are stored in the Stars!.ini file).
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It happens before loading a game at all, while trying to type in the serial number on first running.
1. Download 2.6jrc3 and unzip into a fresh directory
2. Search computer finds no stars.ini anywhere
3. Run stars.exe
4. Serial number prompt appears
5. While typing serial number (or just after waiting a few seconds) Stars disappears
No error message, no error files, nothing.
This is on Windows XP.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Thu, 25 December 2003 06:14 |
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Suppose he could install 98 to play Stars on... I guess. Assuming he can get online while in 98 then that's at least a quick fix maybe..
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Sat, 27 December 2003 10:12 |
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| Ron wrote on Thu, 25 December 2003 18:31 |
Perhaps tell WinXP to run stars.exe in Win98 mode?
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Did that already, and it didn't work.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The player has had to drop out now, but it seems that it wasn't just Stars! that was playing up anyway.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Sat, 27 December 2003 11:27 |
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Can't he just reinstall XP? Nuke the old copy.. Or just install in a new directory?
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Sun, 28 December 2003 16:40 |
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| staz69uk wrote on Sat, 27 December 2003 10:12 |
| Ron wrote on Thu, 25 December 2003 18:31 |
Perhaps tell WinXP to run stars.exe in Win98 mode?
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Did that already, and it didn't work.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The player has had to drop out now, but it seems that it wasn't just Stars! that was playing up anyway.
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I run Stars! on a WinXP machine without any issues whatsoever. So there's either an odd setting issue in the OS, or problem with the security allowing the Stars! exe to write to the location it wants to create the .ini file.
- Kurt
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Sun, 28 December 2003 17:57 |
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Oh.. Hey I think he's got a point there! Does he have adminstrator rights? Or at least rights to write files to the Window's XP directory???
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Sun, 28 December 2003 18:12 |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Sun, 28 December 2003 22:57 |
Oh.. Hey I think he's got a point there! Does he have adminstrator rights? Or at least rights to write files to the Window's XP directory???
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Yep, he has write access to the Windows directory - at least, enough to create stars.ini.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Sun, 28 December 2003 23:59 |
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Write access to %WINDIR% is not needed...I play(ed) Stars! fine at uni without access. The only problem I had was that I had to re-enter my serial code and settings each time I ran it.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Mon, 29 December 2003 03:54 |
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What about something wrong with NTVDM.exe I'll bet most will say "What?" or "What's that gotta do with anything?"
I assure you it's not just random jibberish, NTVDM.EXE is the file that runs everytime you start Stars or any old program it's XP's reverse compatibility thingy.. I know cause I've got a thing that sits up and monitors couple dozen aspects of every process that's running and that file runs EVERY time Stars does. But only on XP. Perhaps his copy of that file is damaged? It's a stab in the dark but no more so than any of the other stabs I see going around here.
On my system NTVDM.EXE is located under %WINDIR%\system32
Give him a replacement for that file see what happens.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Mon, 29 December 2003 05:48 |
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Perhaps. The other program that will(should) be running is wowexec.exe in the same dir. Its properties report that its the 16bit application launcher.
How useful replacing either will be I have no idea..but I very much suspect there are dll's to go with both of them which could be equally corrupt - they're both to small to encompass the backward compatibility by themselves.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Mon, 29 December 2003 09:05 |
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XP will back-out any changes to either file (wowexec or ntvdm), so...
1) it is unlikely that it is just a single corrupt file
2) he would have to change the backed-up copy _and_ the live copy
Doesn't changing ntvdm.exe require booting off a rescue disk ?
Either way, I wouldn't recommend non-technical users mess around with that sort of thing unless they absolutely have to.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Mon, 29 December 2003 15:42 |
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Then.. what about reinstalling XP over itself?? It's a bandaid but maybe that'll work?
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Mon, 29 December 2003 17:58 |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Mon, 29 December 2003 20:42 |
Then.. what about reinstalling XP over itself?? It's a bandaid but maybe that'll work?
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That's about where I got to; my last advice to him was to reinstall, preferably after reformatting if he has backups he trusts.
To be perfectly honest, I tried what I could in the week or so before he dropped from the game (including an _incredibly_ slow remote assistance session over a 56k dial-up) and then had to leave him to it.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Tue, 30 December 2003 03:10 |
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Here's some files That I can see are opened when Stars is started:
LZEXPAND.DLL <-Probably a zip file thing, doubt that's it
TOOLHELP.DLL <-Probably the tool tip thingy.
NETWIN16.DLL <-Interfacing with Star's non existant network?
NWIPXSPX.DLL <-Again Just in case Stars had a network driver.
CALWIN16.DLL <-I dunno but it's 16 bit so it's meant for old stuff
WOWEXEC.EXE <-Now this looks like a good place to start.
MMSYSTEM.DLL <-Probably don't wanna mess with this one.
The DLL that probably goes with NTVDM.EXE is NTDLL.DLL
The DLL that probably goes with WOWEXEC.EXE is WOW32.DLL
Basically the way I see it, he either reinstalls XP or tries replacing WOWEXEC.EXE and if it brakes he reinstalls XP. But if it brakes he can ALWAYS RESTORE A BACKUP!
If he doesn't feel like wiping his HD he can try and reinstall into another directory. Another drive is even better... XP's not as self contained as previous OS's were. (you can't just take down the main directory and hope it's all gone.) Which really sucks, Oh! another posibility is renaming his user under "Documents and Settings" since the regestry files are stored in user directories now. It'll complain it can't find a user and probably prompt to make a new one. If STars works then you know something. The answer is in your user profile.
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| Re: Stars disappears shortly after starting |
Tue, 30 December 2003 03:24 |
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Trying to Brake Stars: WOW isn't it, it does give errors after waiting the proper time but it doesn't just kill the game. Though if it's damaged it might be the cause.
LZEXPAND.DLL doesn't seem to do anything
TOOLHELP.DLL won't let you start without it.
CALWIN16.DLL it complains it doesn't have it but still starts.
MMSYSTEM.DLL gives an error about STars not having all it's parts and quits.
Looks to me from this that WOW*.* in the SYstem 32 directory is about the only thing I can find that gives anything similar to what's reported. I suggest he try and refreash these files. No you don't have to boot disk it. They aren't critical to XP's functionality. So they aren't being run constantly. They are compatibility libaries. Have him try that. I know cause I was taking them away one by one and putting them back. XP was fine it just didn't like STars after messing with these files.
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