Possible solution to Vista vs Horizons problems

[Hasai]

Just in case anyone who sometimes finds themselves wrestling with connectivity problems is interested, the first thing I reach for when such a problem crops up is Wireshark (http://www.wireshark.org/). It quickly lets me know if the problem is at my end, their end, a misconfigured firewall somewhere, etc. There's even training available.

Wireshark is my friend.

];=8)

[Deth]

OK updated my trusted list still no help but for some reason the it can not open the file on my computer called no_update_list.auc. Looking in the folder all of the files are listed with no ext and are file type: File. Anyone had that problem before?

[Fridlekh]

Once extracted (auc files are just zip files) all of the files in \version_info except version.txt have no extension. Not being able to open no_update_list.auc means it's not being retrieved correctly, or some process (like maybe a virus scanner?) has the file locked at the time so the patcher can't extract the no_update_list from it.

[Deth]

Ok I will try disabling AVG and see what happens.

[Deth]

I tried log-in today with the IE tab in firefox and it is patching. So I don't know if it was the reboot or what but hopefully the rest works.

[Deth]

OK just did a test. Using IE7 and Vista Horizons will not load. If I use the firefox IE tab works like a charm. So you might want to try Firefox with IE tab if your having problems.

[Deth]

Nevermind. I did the reboot now I can no longer log in.

[Rhainor]

Remember to make sure horizons.istaria.com is in your "trusted sites" list, and that the Trusted Sites zone is set to accept ActiveX controls.

[Rhainor]

Okay, minor update.

I don't know if this will help anybody, but it might.

Apparently, at least on 32-bit Vista, the problem that breaks Horizons is actually introduced by one of the updates from Windows Update.

I did a reformat/re-install of Vista a few weeks ago, and just after the re-install, I had Horizons working fine. Then I installed some updates for Windows, and Horizons started doing its "I hate Vista" thing again.

I'm not sure exactly which patch(es) broke Horizons, as I installed several at the same time.

I'm not sure if I've found the source of the problem or just another symptom, but the more we know about the problem, the closer we are to a solution.

[CallakDW]

Well, not that I'm much help here in stating this, but I too can't get the game to run. I've tried the MSVCRT.DLL solution and I get the entrypoint error. I've tried the 64 bit vs2005 c++ redist package and it won't run either. Tried a few things that had helped with some other games, but no luck. Looks like I'm going to have to wait a while along with several others to be able to get back to Ishtaria.

[CallakDW]

And I take that back. I did all these things all at the same time, and now it's working. I'll report back if it stays working or not.

[Greenclaw1]

After reading through this is pretty clear the dev team need to make Horizons Vista compatibility an absolute priority. There far to many hoops to jump through that it will put off a lot of new players and returnee players who've migrated to Vista. I hope the dev team can rise to this challenge as it's an important part of achieving their goals with subscribers numbers.

[Durand]

I decided to try and load Horizons on my Windows Vista laptop. I experienced the same issue when attempting to run Horizons (as my user, and administrator). I also tried the solution for adding the .dll to horizons root folder and the Horizons.exe.local folder, to no avail.

If you want to turn off the 'auto-delete' files option when starting. Go to the start menu, type regedit in the search box and hit enter. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, ArtifactEntertainment, Horizons, version. Right click the AlwaysDelete registry key and select modify. Change the 1 to a 0. That should prevent Horizons from deleting files automatically.

Second, I have found another possible cause of the issue, but haven't yet tried it. Has anyone attempted the following?



Disable DEP / NoExecute Protection

DEP, otherwise known as NoExecute, is a piece of technology in Windows that prevents processes from being altered in live memory. This lowers the frequency of certain attacks, but it can also have some adverse effects and cause certain things not to run.

Due to the way Windows Vista™’s boot editor has been created, it is now harder to disable DEP / No Execute Protection. After a little looking around, I figured it out. Here's how to do it:

Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, right click on “Command Prompt”, and click “Run as administrator”.
If asked for permission to run Windows Command Processor, click on Allow.
At the command prompt, type in “bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff” (without the quotes).
You should receive a message saying “Operation Completed Successfully”.
Restart the computer, DEP / No Execute should now be disabled.

[Durand]

Ignore me. Someone else already found the DEP issue.

[Durand]

Does anyone have Horizons working with Vista and Directx10?

[Zexoin]

I got my laptop back today. I decided to play and checked if the game would run again with the horizons.local trick. I double-clicked on horizons.exe, the game started launching and I got the error message asking me to log in via the web site. Until then everything was fine, I knew I could play today. But I forgot that I had to patch...
Now I can't get it to run anymore : I get an erreor message telling :"The proceedure entry point _ftol2_sse cannot be found in the msvcrt.dll file."
No matter what I do I can't get rid of this problem... *sighs* no Horizons for me until Monday...

[CallakDW]

Does anyone have Horizons working with Vista and Directx10?

Eye... Vista 64. After doing the things mentioned above add diabling DEP for HZ. That's 64 bit vs2005 c++ redist package, MSVCRT.DLL placed in both horizons and in horizons\Horizons.exe.local as well as disable DEP for Horizons.exe. Not sure if all of it was nessisary but it's working now. Might pick it apart a little later to figure out what portions really aren't needed.

[Vahrokh]

I ran Horizons with DEP left at default just fine. Vista 32 bit Ultimate version.

[Zexoin]

Okay... This morning I installed every Vista updates, and deleted the horizons.exe folder, with the msvcrt.dll file. After a reboot, I got HZ to run, without any trick...
I'm completely lost, could it be that Microsoft solved the problem ?

[Vahrokh]

Does it keep working reboot after reboot?