Hi there, for the life of me I can not get WW to proceed any further than the introductory movie, at which time an application error message is generated. I attempted a reinstall, an overwriting actually, following a rebooting of my OS (XP pro) after a viral attack recently. I had completed all but one of the quests of Ishad N'ha prior to the lockout, and had actually periodically received the same application error on occassion during my play, but could simply quit the game and start again from a saved game without the error reappearing--this seems to have been a random happening to me. Now, after much frustration, numerous and various attempts to fix the problem, I can't even get to start the game from scratch; and yes, I have purged my saved games. The error reads "Application Error: D:\PROGRA~1WIZARD~1\deep6.exe The instruction at 00423dba referenced memory at 02001000 The memory could not be written". Now, through various attempts the origin remains the same, i.e., 00423dba, while the destination has changed with each try, i.e., 01fa1000 or 01dce000 etc. After I acknowledge the error the game's sound starts to loop and deep6 remains on the task bar, apparently open but not playable. My system config: P4, 256 DDR, GeForce2, XP-pro on dedicated partition, DirectX 9, (if of interest I employed winzip prior to the lockout and now use winrar); what I have tried: patches, compatability 1995, reformatting my disk, extracting and opening from patch deep6, even exchanging the disks for a new game at the place of purchase; I have read through the threads and trawled the web for some sought of solution to no avail. Lastly, I had a salesperson attempt installation at the store I purchased the disks from and guess what, the same thing happened to him (remember, the disks DID work prior to lockout). If there is anyone out there that may have a fix for this I would be absolutely stoked, for I have only recently started playing RPG's and love WW. Yours, Berik.

Hmmmm..... you have got a tricky one, to be sure. If you've done everything suggested in the Tech Tips thread, I'm not sure what we're going to be able to suggest. Let me, however, ask a couple more questions...

1. GeForce2... are you using hardware or software acceleration? Try switching down to software.

2. Have you done the virtualdub trick on all your .avi files? Did it take?

3. I was going to ask about defragging, but if you formatted the hard drive, that should be a moot point. However, what are your virtual memory settings?

4. What other stuff is running in the background when you try to run W&W? IOW, what's the Task Manager process (not application) list look like? You want to close all non-essential programs (especially IM and file sharing apps).

5. When you formatted the hard drive, did you do a full low-level format (wiping the drive and partitions and starting over)?

6. Have you updated your drivers recently? Willow can give better driver version information, but a GEForce 2 is older (and what I'm looking for for my kids' PCs). If you have plans for a vid card upgrade, now might be a good time to put them in play.

7. Did you put the Win95 compatibility flag on deep6.exe, or on the shortcut you're using to run it? Both would be better....

Try that one for size, and toss back your responses. We'll see where we can get to from there...

[ 02-04-2004, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: Bungleau ]

Welcome to the board, Berik. [img]graemlins/happywave.gif[/img]

I trust our techies will have your problem sorted out in no time.

Welcome to the board, Berik!!

We've got the very best Techie posters!! Hope your problem is already solved with Bungleau's suggestions but if not, just come on back and ask for additional help. They've not failed to solve a problem yet!

Wyv

Hi guys,
Thanks for your advice, but still no joy
I have turned off all background programs,
reinstalled the patch
Checked all approciate files are running in compatability mode,
I don't think I am ruuning accelaration softeare/hardware,
I have updated all my drivers, that I could update, and updated the bios (if that is not the same thing!),
I defragged all drives,
and I have a virtual memory of min395-max 790 on all drives.
So anyone else want to try ???
Could it be a bad disk, faulty software??

A bad disk wouldn't give you that exception error. No it's the dang memory write protect that was introduced in Windows 2000. However, running the game in compatibility mode should solve most of those errors. BTW, only one file should be run in compatibility mode and that's deep6.exe.

Now I noticed you have the game installed on D:. That may be a problem. I guess you have a small system disk and then you use the D: partition for programs. If you have the space, try to install the game on C:. I have no idea if that would make a difference but some software need to be installed on the system disk.

Oh and welcome to the board. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 02-04-2004, 06:44 AM: Message edited by: WillowIX ]

Hi Barek, and welcome. I'm not sure if i'm on the right track here, but i had problems when i first played the game in WINXP. The opening sequence of the game would freeze up on me, because i didn't have the right video drivers for it. As i vaguely recall, i used to ignore the error and then when i got a blank screen, i would press the Enter key and the game would start. I think i solved the problem by running the program in WIN 95 mode, but it's such a long time ago i can't remember. Does this ring any bells folks?

Yea...I play W&W on a WinXP computer and that's how I solved my computer problems bye switching the compatability of the .exe file (I do forget the name of the file..ut it might be deep6) Anyways I changed the compatibility of that to Win95 and presto my problem was fixed...

Okay... lessee..

... I prefer to have virtual memory at a constant level instead of the range. Otherwise, Windows tries to adjust it based on your needs, and it can easily get rather fragmented. For your system, I would set the min and max values to 736 (assuming you've got 736MB of disk available for the swap file). I put my swap file on a disk other than the main system disk, too, but that's less of an issue.

Hardware versus software mode is determined in the game settings. Go to Options, Graphics and choose Software mode (if it's not already selected). You might also turn down or off all the other graphics options -- detail, MIP maps, and so on. Hopefully you won't have to play this way, but if it helps you get through this, you can then start turning them back on.

Memory error... could be bad memory, too. Have you tried swapping the memory to see if that helps? 256 MB of memory should be fairly cheap these days, and might make a difference. It could also explain why the problem suddenly started occuring after the infection.

You mentioned you turned off background programs, but what background processes are still running? Please provide a list.

And when you did the reformat of the hard drive, was it a low-level format (erasing the master boot record and starting over), or was it a simple format (which just clears the data portion)? If FDISK didn't come into play, you may want to consider that....

And please confirm that deep6.exe has been set for win95 compatibility mode. :D

We'll get you there... one way or another [img]smile.gif[/img]

Just to note that this shouldn't be a problem here. Had the physical memory been corrupt he would see the blue screen of death instead of getting the "memory can't be written" message. The probable culprit behind this is Memory write protect, hence software can't change registry settings. Usually you can get by this by upgrading video drivers, active x components etc., but we can't since there is no compatible version of deep6.exe for Windows 2000/XP. Therefore it seems that Windows 2000/XP handles the deep6.exe file as corrupt when it is actually not. Compatibility mode should correct this.

[ 02-04-2004, 11:52 AM: Message edited by: WillowIX ]

Hi guys,
Let me explain some things a little better. When the reformat was done, only c drive was completely reformatted, wiped clean. In an attempt to save the game and some music files both D & E were not reformatted. Now since the problem with the game I have tried to reformat D, but it would'nt let me. The friend who performed the c reformat from the disk (I am not very computer Savvy) was totally surprised about this and could not explain. The reason I put the game on D was because he told us to only ever put Operating stuff on C in case I was locked out again. I guess so I would not loose heaps of progs and data like last time. I moved the game back to c per your suggestion, no change. I am unable to access game settings at all as it crashes as soon as the opening video finishes. in fact unless I uninstall and reinstall I don't even get the video. Nada, I click to start game and It opens a black screen for a few secs and then crashes. Yes, the deep 6 is marked to run in compatibility for 95. As for a list of the background progs can someone explain where to find this, I have found it before but for the life of me can't find it again. All I did was disable all progs that were shown as running in the tool bar. As I said, I am familiar with my computer, but not savvy. I have brought and begun Dungeon Seige as I was getting desperate for some questing, but still would love to be able to play WW, so if you need any more info, let me know.

Hmmm... If I were your computer friend, I'd be laying in a supply of mountain dew... :D

Okay, in no particular order...

1. To get the list of programs that are running, you need to open the Task Manager. The old standby method for doing this is to hit ctrl-alt-delete; that brings up the task manager on Win9x, and bring up a window that lets you get to the task manager on Win2k and XP. I forget what it does on NT.

You can also get to it by right-clicking on the start bar in Win2k and higher, I think. Something over there...

2. If your system was downed because of a virus, reformatting D: and E: may not be a bad idea. At the least, you should make sure they are thoroughly scanned and given a clean bill of health.

3. D: and E:? Do you have three drives in there, or did someone partition your drive into three (or more) pieces? If you're talking about partitioning, then starting over involves doing a low-level format -- wiping all the partitions from the disk and then recreating, reformatting, and reinstalling windows. I'm going to be doing that on this PC soon... just because it gets a little flaky. Plus it will let me clean up some old junk [img]smile.gif[/img]

4. As part of that complete reformat, I would save your savegame directory and roster.dat file. That's all you need to get back to where you were when you completely remove and reinstall the game. IF you haven't done that yet, I'd suggest it.

5. There may be some files on D: that are in use by Windows. That may be what's preventing you from reformatting it. On my system (two hard drives), my virtual memory swap file is on drive D:.

Unfortunately, I'm feeling that if this were my machine, I would do a complete low-level format of the entire thing and start back over from scratch. That includes all three drives, and may involve finding an uber-geek to help out, if you're not comfortable with that process. Before you do it, make sure to back up everything you may want or need to some place -- tape, CD, other computer, or whatever. Note that "want or need" refers to data, not programs. You can reload W&W; you can't reload your saved games or roster.dat.

And please, ask more questions. I know how frustrating it is to try to get something to work, and I can tell you it's possible. It may just be a little challenging getting there, but we can help you do it.

IT IS FIXED.
I had to go to the Microsoft Download Centre for something else, and while looking through the list of available updates I found one which said :
update for "game crashes immediately after video plays" which was caused by installation of patch ***** for ****.
Or something similar anyway. So I added it to my list, downloaded it, restarted the comp. And BINGO. Game started as normal. So thanks for all your help guys, but it appears the culprit was an update installed when the comp was rebooted from disk. It was Microsoft all along. Have a great day.

Berik, would you be so kind to post either the hotfix number or a link to te Microsoft site regarding this problem? This could very well be an essential fix for many players. And I don't doubt there is an equivalent of this "patch" fr Windows 2000. Any further information would be very helpful. [img]smile.gif[/img]

And it's great your game is working. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] Enjoy it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Cool! [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] I second Willow's thoughts... if you can find that patch info again, it should be in the Tech Tips thread.

Now go out there and kill something.... [img]smile.gif[/img]