Vista SP1

[gopher65]

This is a Vista thing, but it deserves a new topic, cause it deals with the post-SP1 situation, and therefore previous information may no longer be valid (so merging this with a Vista thread would just be confusing):

People have said that SP1 helped them run HZ on a constant basis. Windows update just downloaded and installed SP1, and no go.

What additional steps did people take to make HZ work on SP1 besides installing the update itself?

[gopher65]

From "consistantly working under vista" threadNope had Vista running on this Pc since July 07. Did you apply run as Admin check box for the files Horizons.exe, HorizonsLauncher.exe and silentPatcher.exe in the Horizons dir? Do that then turn off UAC. The only other thing I can think off that I have turned off is also the Vista Aero UI. I also installed that 2005 C++ sp for vista after I installed sp1 RC.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Nope, no go for me.

MS released SP1 today, and I tried all of these things, but it doesn't work still. Anyone have any other suggestions? Did you guys do anything else, or does it just randomly work for some people and not others? Were there any SP1 specific steps that people took?

I also reinstalled HZ and restarted a few times.

EDIT: I also tried deleting the following prefetch files from the windows directory and rebooting on the advice of tramsan. Still no go:

HORIZONS.EXE-CDE2411C.pf
HORIZONSLAUNCHER.EXE-B8EFF32E.pf

[Barnaby Gump]

Given that for most folks that do get Horizons to run under Vista require several restarts to get it to work it is likely an issue with the ASLR (address space layout randomization) that is causing the issue. If something is depending on certain things being in a fixed location (which is what some viruses do, which is why ASLR is a good thing) or below a certain memory address (which would no longer be the case) that would cause the program to crash.

I was able to get the program to run once after installing SP1, and no luck since then. One additional thing that might make things work better is there is apparently a bug that is causing a stack overflow (tech speak for something that makes the program crash) that is probably related to the number of additional system DLLs that previously were in the Windows system directory (short path name), and are now in the winsxs directory (almost as long as possible path names). I managed to figure out how to get local copies of the files that were being loaded from the winsxs directory to load out of the local directory and that allowed Horizons to get further in the load process before it crashed, but with the latest client release on blight all of that was deleted and so far I haven't had much luck getting the local side-by-side DLL stuff to work again. If I can figure out how to get that setup again and it seems to make a difference I will post the steps.

[Greenclaw1]

It would be interesting to see the hardware setup between those who have no issue getting Vista to work with Horizons following those steps, and those who can't get it to work. Also those who have to do a few reboots to get it to work. It will also be interesting to see if all those still having issues are using package Pc's that came with Vista pre installed or they're using custom Pc's they've built with their own hands. Just a thought to see if a pattern emerges.

[gopher65]

Vista 32-bit SP1
AMD 64-bit X2 6000+ 3gHz
nVidia 8500GT 256meg
2 gigs of ram
onboard sound (I think. Realtek)
iSCSI hard drive interface 0_o

I don't know what my motherboard is off the top of my head, and I'm not sure how to find out without opening the case, and I'm not in the mood to do that right now. The bios is from Phoenix Technologies, version LTD 6.00 PG.

[Zexoin]

can find my computer specifications here.
I replaced the RAM since, with 3gigs.

Using Vista 32 bits basic edition currently.

[Barnaby Gump]

I had 2 seperate issues on my machine, the first being that an inifnite loop was getting hit in the memory management DLL, and once I fixed that I was running into a thread being spawned with a bogus code address which seems to be due to the ASLR, but with enough restarts I was able to get things to run after a random number of restarts. So far I haven't figured out why the thread crash is happening, but at least I was able to get it so that I can sometimes get the client to run.

Once I did get a restart where the client would run, no problems running 2 clients in Windowed mode!

I'm running on a Toshiba Laptop with a Core2 Duo T5450 @1.66 GHz, 2 GB of memory, 4 GB of Readyboost, Vista Ultimate with SP1.

[Foxfire]

I got it working with this latest version of SP1!!!!

The latest things I did that seemed to make things work, after months of fiddling with it:

1) Removed the SP1 FC I had been experimenting with based on the thread. I had to remove it manually, SP1 proper doesn't seem to think it should replace it, so it wasn't showing up in Windows Update.
2) Installed SP1.
3) My horizons.exe had been mucked with, so I set it to:
-All compatibility switches turned off. (I had compatibility mode turned on)
-Account Security turned off (But listed in gray as running as Admin)
-Full rights for all users

It worked from the browser (uncheck .NET patcher), but not the launcher, consistently!!

Hooray, I'm back!

[gopher65]

Well, I tried all of that, and none of it worked, so I tried one more thing: I disabled superfetch. Poof. It works now.

EDIT: Well, it worked once anyway. Still, I'd never been able to get it working before at all, no matter how many restarts I did.

[Spirit]

Just tried the things Foxfire did, but no go for me. Whether I use the website or the launcher, as soon as horizons.exe is run I get the "horizons.exe has stopped" etc etc message box.

I didn't use a beta SP1, but I got it between it being released to Msdn members and when it was released through Windows Update. I can't see there being any difference though, surely?

All I can say is Balls!!! Ahh well...

Rakku

[Deth]

I did a fresh build with SP1 and still no go my self. But I get an error with trying to start the Horizon.exe. I should post what it is as it might be an easy fix.

[Spirit]

Welcome to my world...



Really useful window lol... *sigh*

[Nidhoggr]

You need to upgrade... to XP

[Spirit]

You need to upgrade... to XP

Thankfully I have it on dual boot, but since this thing came with Vista it's what I do my work/email/more creative stuff on. I'd always usually have Horizons running in the background. Sure I could move the installed programs over to Xp, but it could really turn into a can of worms. I'd rather they fix Hz's to work on Vista...

Rakku

[tramsan]

Rakku, the can of worms around here is Vista. Really. You're clinging to Win ME of the NT generation.

[Spirit]

Rakku, the can of worms around here is Vista. Really. You're clinging to Win ME of the NT generation.

There's a good saying... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

The only thing broke is Horizons lol ... sure Vista is slow, but for working on I actually prefer it! :| And yeah it's a new ME for sure, but nowhere near as bad. ME was an absolute catastrophy of an operating system, and has my personal record for shortest time installed on my pc before another format. About 35 minutes. Horrible.. *shudders*

Rakku

[Nidhoggr]

lol I killed a Windows ME system, simply by installing Star Trek Elite Force on it... Vista definitely isn't as bad as ME, but I'm stick with XP for quite a while.

[gopher65]

The only thing broke is Horizons lol ... sure Vista is slow, but for working on I actually prefer it! :|

Me too, on both counts. Once you get rid of all of Vista's annoying features I like it better than XP. But none of those annoying features should have been in the OS in the first place IMO, and that's part of what makes Vista cruddy.

[Spirit]

Me too, on both counts. Once you get rid of all of Vista's annoying features I like it better than XP. But none of those annoying features should have been in the OS in the first place IMO, and that's part of what makes Vista cruddy.

Yeah I killed superfetch, automatic updates and indexing to try and prevent hd death since the hd was *almost always* on. The only gripe I can't seem to deal with is installation of new hardware... just plug a mouse into a different usb port and it takes *forever* to install it first time. I don't know how hardware is handled compared to xp, but xp could achieve the same thing in seconds. Oh and then system restore then takes a good five minutes to do *something clearly most complex* after installing hardware or software. It's Nuts.

When Horizons did work... I could swear that it actually ran smoother on Vista, and I could go longer between restarts.

Rakku

[gopher65]

Question: I just slapped in another Hard Drive and transferred HZ to that (and changed the def files). I haven't been able to start HZ yet, but I haven't restarted a bunch of times either. I just try HZ each time I start/restart for some other reason.

Anyway, I right clicked on the HZ folder figuring that I might need to reset the permissions, and I notice that there are no permission options at all on the second drive. Do permissions only apply to the drive that windows is installed on, or do secondary drives automatically get reduced permissions? Will HZ even run on a secondary drive in Vista?