cant play using xp

[Fratricide]

Aight.. heres the situation... I just got back from a, well lets just say, involuntary absense from the game, and I tried to login. Well.. I remember all my login info, as I can access the weblogin just fine, and I can even access the stand alone launcher just fine, the problem however lies after the login proceedure. I try to actually get into the game, and neither method actually causes the games .exe to run, nor can I get the .exe to even attempt to run, like that vista fix suggests. It doesn't give me any error messages or anything.

Usually I don't have this many issues with any software, but this is just getting baffling to me.

I am running WinXP SP3, but SP2 was doing the same thing.
I can provide any other software/hardware info that anyone is curious about, like a dxdiag or whatever, but like I say, this is just wacky. I'm almost to the point of reformatting, but I didn't really want to go to that extreme yet, as only my most essential files are backed up on a regular basis, and those "nice to have" files have not been backed up for a while, though recreatable.

Anyway... if anyone can think of some reason why the client isn't playing nice on my XP system, I'd be glad to try to force it to play nice if anyone has an Idea...

Also... I did make sure that the game was on my firewall access list, and I opened the ports through my router/firewall as well, so those issues should be staved off... but like I say, there has been no error messages or anything, just the client not starting up at all, like, it doesn't exist.

[awdz]

don't know about your stuff, but it took me a half dozen login attempts tonight - i think a neighbor is interfering with my wireless reception, and it is driving me nuts in a very bad way :-(

[Fratricide]

heh... thats one thing Im sure I don't have an issue with.. I don't have my wireless router connected.. and even if I did put the other one on, my closest neighbor is more then 300 ft away. Plus me router is in the basement with solid 8" concrete walls... so, that pretty much rules them folks out.

[Yuma]

you should check your NAT and DMZ settings in the router. Maybe there is a problem.

[Sigi]

Bit of a stupid question maybe, but since you haven't played for a while,
Do you still have the game installed?

You can login in fine without the client on your pc, but playing isn't possible.

[Fratricide]

Bit of a stupid question maybe, but since you haven't played for a while,
Do you still have the game installed?

You can login in fine without the client on your pc, but playing isn't possible.

heh.. Yea.. I got quite a chuckle outta this one... Yes.. the game is installed, I actually DLed and installed a fresh set, just to make sure it was the game not playing nice. I'm about to test playing on one of my other systems... if it works on there, then I know there must be some wacky stuff going on with this one.

[Deth]

Have you added the trusted sites? I forget what they are but are listed in the vista threads around here. Also are you getting the new Icon showing the ActiveX controls are loaded?

[Fratricide]

I believe all that is good, as I don't get any message at all when the Horizons.exe file just stops working. 2 of my systems have the same issue, havn't tested on my last windows machine yet, but I know I was able to play the game on this system previously.

[Zexoin]

Do you have the small loading window (the one there was a "contest" for not long ago) appears, then the exe just stops instead of loading the game window ? I had that problem about 2 years ago. It fixed itself with patching

[Landowyn]

If you're able to patch, try doing a full scan. Might help.

[Fratricide]

I still am not able to get in, and I've tried several things.

1) patched through IE, using full scan option.
a) patches fine, as far as I can tell.
b) click on play button and it says it is starting the game, but nothing.

2) Patch through the stand alone patcher, using various options including full scan.
a) Patches fine, as far as I can tell.
b) Click on play, and the screen says it starting up Horizons, but the window just closes itself and nothing happens.

It's kinda wierd, I woulda thought that both systems I loaded it on here wouldn't have the same issue, but alas, they both act identical.

I'll continue to try to patch, to see if that fixes anything, but if the files on the server are the same as the ones I have currently, I don't see how patching the same files will fix anything.

[Zexoin]

have you tried double-clicking on the exe to see what happens ? Or launch with a batch file ?

[Fratricide]

Yea.. tried just running the exe, and it shows up briefly in the task manager, but it just terminates with no error messages. As for the batch file, I haven't tried that method yet... I'll have to find the batch file first..

[Steelclaw]

Hm.. Interesting.

Try deleting horizons.exe and doing a full scan again. That will cause a fresh .exe to be downloaded.


If that fails in the same manner, then there is something wrong relating to horizons.exe and not the launch method. You can get horizons.exe to poop out some logs, which may be helpful.

1) open prefs\ClientPrefs_launch.def in notepad
2) make sure the following prefs are set as indicated:
bool requireCommandLineParams = false
bool logsEnabled = true
bool constantFlush = true
3) save and quit
4) doubleclick horizons.exe andsee what happens.

You *should* see in this order:
- "Istaria" Splash screen (a small, decoration-less window that shows loading progress in percentage)
- the game window or switch to fullscreen (this is the window that displays the game and UI)
- a popup box saying that your username and password could not be validated (or something like that)

If that doesn't happen, check your logs directory. There should be a few non-zero length files in there dated at the time you ran horizons.exe. The interesting ones are the debug log and maura log.

[Fratricide]

Aye SC I did the whole delete the .exe like 3 times with the full scan.. just in case, but to no avail (did it previous to your suggestion as well).

Just modded the launch prefs.. this is what I got in my log files...



Maura file says:
crash_log: open_maura(): Successfully started crash log at 06.26.2008 22:35:17.437.

Client debug log says:
DEBUG WinMain Entering client application in release mode...
STAT dprintf [[06/26/08 22:35:17] ] -1.00 FPS

I have no Idea whats up.. I even disabled my firewall and antivirus.. and still nothing any other ideas?

[Steelclaw]

Which state does your client get to?

You *should* see in this order:
- "Istaria" Splash screen (a small, decoration-less window that shows loading progress in percentage)
- the game window or switch to fullscreen (this is the window that displays the game and UI)
- a popup box saying that your username and password could not be validated (or something like that)

[Fratricide]

The client doesn't get to any state. It basically terminates immediately after the process starts, sometimes will run for even 1 second. I get no splash screen, no nothing. The patcher shows up all fine and all, but any and all subsequent states are non-existant.

[Steelclaw]

Ugh. That means, among other things, that the process gets killed before it gets a chance to say why. Now, the question is, is it dying on its own, is something killing it, or is it doing something bad and causing windows to kill it?

Are you running some weird flavor of XP, like XP-64? Anything interesting in the event logs? Do any other programs exhibit the same behavior? How bad do you want to figure this out vs trying on a clean install (preferably on a separate disk)?

[Nidhoggr]

Have you tried completely disabling your firewall. Sometimes software firewalls will prevent applications from running even if you set a rule to allow that specfic application to run.

[tjl]

DEP settings maybe? I think this may have happened to me before... maybe.

navigate to:
system properties > advanced tab > performance settings

should be a tab in the window that opens called Data Execution Prevention.
I have it on for windows services only.

also echoing the firewall comments... turn them ALL off (including windows built in firewall, if you have a 3rd party firewall) and see what happens.