[Steam] Game wont start

[AlexanderBoesen]

View attachment system.txt
View attachment DxDiag.txt
View attachment Event Viewer - Administrative Events.txt
View attachment Event Viewer -Windows Logs Applications.txt

Bought the game on steam, running for the first time. After clicking on Start (the launcher seems to work fine, all DLCs are listed), nothing seems to happen. Steam will consider me as playing CK2 for a while, and then even that will go away. There's no error message. I've...

-Installed all Windows updates (optional too!)

-tried the suggested method of starting it in 640*480 compatability

-disabled the desktop options in compatability

-installed .Net framework, Visual Basic redistributables, DirectX

-updated my display drivers

-moving the game folder outside of Program Files

-tried running the demo (for troubleshooting!)

-tried fiddling with Avira (Didn't find anything in the quarantine, also tried shutting Avira down)

-changed text size (a peculiar solution suggested somewhere, didn't work)

-enabled running as admin (on both .exes)

-tried changing the settings in the settings.txt, refresh rate at 0 seemed to have little to do with this (My EUIII didn't work before I changed the refresh rate to 60. Now works perfectly! )

-tried running the game straight through ck2.exe

-tried several clean installs of the game and verified integrity

-tried giving CK2 acces to more than 2gb of memory, as suggested somewhere. This solution seems to be 32-bit system exclusive.

...and nothing had effect on the problem. What should I do? Seems that only solution is to re-install Windows but I'm not sure if I want to play the game THAT much.
Anyhow, I've enclosed DxDiag , CK's system.log and Event Viewer logs as text files (top of the post). All help appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

[AndrewT]

You say you updated your video driver - where from? Because the one in that dxdiag is not the latest, and also it seems to be a beta. Try this one
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/legacy/Pages/legacy-radeonaiw-vista64.aspx

Also your CK2 has not been patched since March somehow, Steam should do that automatically. Either yu are offline, you have updating turned off, or you've opted into an old beta version. Check these in the Steam client, for the last one go into the game's properties, beta tab, and opt out of all betas.

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

I got the driver update trough steam, I recall. Usually it has downloaded driver updates automatically, but you can check for updates manually too. Maybe steam didn't get the latest driver for some reason? I installed the driver you suggested, didn't help. Re-installing the game now to make sure.

A for the beta, I participated in it just to test if it worked, I had the problem before installing the beta. (Steam seems to have an option to participate in 1.09x and open beta 1.103b). Seems that I never changed it back.

Edit: Reinstall didn't work
Edit 2: This is my Dxdiag report after I did another sweep of the drivers and installed the drivers you linked. View attachment Dxdiag another go.txt

 

[AndrewT]

Well that looks fine now. I see you have Steam in the system path, did you re-do the setting of ck2.exe to run as Admin and to disable desktop composition, after the patching to 1.012? It has successsfully patched to that version, I assume, search setup.log for "checksum".

Did your reinstall include manually deleting all CK2 remnants from under both the Steam and MyDocuments directories?

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

The logs in the My Documents folder are all empty, save for system.log. The changelog file in CK2's folder does imply that it's 1.012. CK2.exe is set to run as admin, desktop composition is disabled... and it still doesn't work. Maybe something wrong with the My Documents files?

 

[AndrewT]

Well there could be, but if your reinstall included deleting them all - you didn't answer that question - then new good ones ought to have been generated.

Good to see it's 1.102 but does the checksum check out?

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

Yes, by clean install I meant deleting both the game folder and My Documents folder. Setup.log seems to be empty, the only .log file that has anything is system.log.

Sorry to be such a trouble x__x

 

[AndrewT]

No setup.log at all? That is odd, that means it's crashing right at the very start. Something is badly wrong somewhere, either the game is corrupt or Windows has a problem.

I know you said so upthread, but can you go through this list again please, and check off every item for certain?


Please try installing:

First: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555

After that: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8328

Then: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35
(If that doesn't do anything then http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109 )

Then: visit the Windows Update site and allow it to apply all .NET updates/patches it wants to, for all .NET versions.


Then right-click on ck2.exe and ck2game.exe and set them to run as the Admin user, and to disable desktop composition.
And then check if you can run the game after that.

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

Tried installing, all but the last (directx runtimes) said that a more recent version of the software has been installed on the computer. Should I uninstall the previous versions of visual c++ and .net once again?

Anyhow, DirectX installed something, didn't help.

Been to the Windows Update page many times, allowed everything. No new updates available. By Windows updates page you do mean control panel -> windows update?

And by the way, a few days ago I found out that some parts of .net framework were not enabled in "turn Windows features on or off"-page. I Enabled everything related to .net but that didn't really affect anything. I think I disabled them because of some another game that had problems with it, years ago or so. Think that might have something to do with the problem?

 

[AndrewT]

Not really, because only the the Launcher uses .NET, not the game itself. I just pasted that whole thing in there for completeness.

Here's one from left field. Copy the whole CK2 folder out from under Steam to somewhere new like c:\games\ck2\ . Now (with notepad) create a text file in that new CK2 directory called userdir.txt and put a single line in it:

c:\games\ck2\user\

and hit Enter (return, CR, carriage return, you know) . Save that and manually run ck2game.exe from there. When it runs up hit Play and see if ck2.exe runs now, at the least does it create that new directory and populate it with settings.txt and logs and so on?

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

Copied the game away from steam folder and did as you ordered.

First the launcher gave an error, something that it can't access the folder c:\games\ck2\user\. (Is my game folder supposed to be named Crusader Kings II or CK2 Btw?)

I manually created the "user" folder, after which the error disappeared. Game didn't launch, and more importantly it didn't create anything in the user folder. (Strange though, first complaining about how it cant access it, yet nothing was created there upon launch.)

I also tried running the game after destroying the mydocs folder to see if the files repopulate there upon launch, but nothing happened there either.

Still, thanks for all the help so far, anyway!

 

[John Hadley]

It seems odd to me that in your event viewer log the game crashed four times, each time in a different place. That's not usually how crashes work unless you have unstable hardware that is overheating or has faulty ram or slightly off memory timings or a power supply that can't supply enough power so its voltage goes out of proper operating range and causes the memory to lose data or something like that. Have you played any other DirectX games successfully on your computer recently?

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

I was thinking something like that, but I've been successfully playing many games and haven't come across anything that wouldn't work. Not sure which games require DirectX but I've been playing titles like Shogun2, Civ5 and War of the Roses, no problem. There's never really been any problems before that I couldn't solve myself.

 

[John Hadley]

I found something interesting here about Avira that sounds like it might be relevant related to Avira causing PCs to crash:
http://www.windowstalk.org/2012/07/anti-virus-aviras-new-update-leads-to-pc-crashes/

I see a report here for another game that some popup caused by Avira will cause the game to crash if it happens while the game is running.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=596065

I would try to completely uninstall Avira using the instructions in the first thread (in safe mode) and see if that makes your problem go away. Perhaps just disabling it is not enough because antivirus has drivers that work at a very low level in the system. You can always reinstall it afterwards if you find that is not the issue.

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

Tried uninstalling Avira in safe mode, didn't help. I'll double check if I'll find any remnants of it. Maybe should consider another Antivirus software anyway?

 

[John Hadley]

I'm not sure you need to replace Avira. I just know that it would be a good troubleshooting step to try to completely remove any remnants of it and play the game without it as a few antivirus softwares have definitely caused problems for some people. Most commonly I think the problem is Comodo, but its not the only one.

The way that you are describing that the game stops working but Windows doesn't immediately give you a report that it has crashed is consistent with some kind of antivirus or firewall or other security application blocking the application temporarily then opening a window to ask you if it is ok to continue running or whether it should block or allow internet access or something of that nature. The problem could be that the game is in full screen mode so the pop up window would not even be seen for you to respond to it. Until you respond to it, the game won't continue and you don't even know its there to respond to because it doesn't show on the screen.

Try this as a troubleshooting step:

Edit the file "settings.txt" in "My Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II". There should be a line that says "fullScreen=yes". Change this line to "fullScreen=no". Now start up Crusader Kings II and if any kind of security application gives a popup you should be able to see it and respond to it and maybe get all the way into the game.

gui=
{
	language=l_english
	has_set_language=yes
}
graphics=
{
	size=
	{
		x=1280
		y=1024
	}

	refreshRate=75
	fullScreen=yes  <------ Change to no
	shadows=no
	shadowSize=2048
	multi_sampling=0
	anisotropic_filtering=0
	gamma=50.000000
}

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

Tried this, but the problem is that nothing ever shows up. Not even a black loading screen or anything. Nothing visual really happens when I try to run the game. (Except Windows turning desktop composition off, of course) The application can be seen in the processes for a while, then it disappears.

 

[John Hadley]

I'm quickly running out of ideas as to why you you can't start the game if you've done all those troubleshooting steps. It could be something related to an incorrect version of a Windows system file maybe. Here's a link that tells how to run the system file checker:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

Perhaps you could try to boot Windows in safe mode by pressing Ctrl-F8 then run the game, just as a troubleshooting operation. The game will run very slowly without a proper accelerated video card but you can see if it can at least start the game. If it can then there is probably some other program that is booting up when you start your computer that is conflicting with it the game.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/start-your-computer-in-safe-mode

 

[AlexanderBoesen]

Did both, nothing :C

The game didn't start in safe mode because it was unable to "create video device" or something like that. Don't know if that's the real problem or just a symptom of trying to run the game in safe mode.

Sorry to be such a trouble X__X

 

[John Hadley]

I was able to run the game in safe mode on my Windows 8 computer. I tried it myself to see if it could be done before suggesting that you try it, but you aren't using Windows 8 and I don't know what differences there may be between the default video driver on Windows 7 and Windows 8. It was worth a shot. On my computer first it warned me that my video driver didn't have 512 MB of RAM then it went ahead and started the game anyway and it drew the graphics at a very slow speed in the game, but it was working.

When you say the system file checker did nothing do you mean that it didn't find any invalid system files or do you mean that it did not even scan or do anything at all?

Try again to reinstall DirectX from this link, which is different from the web install and see if that helps any:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

If not, I'm all out of ideas. You'll have to wait and see if someone from Paradox has anything else for you to try. They are probably on vacation today for the 4th of July holiday here in the US. You've validated your system files, installed a new video driver, reinstalled the game files, the only thing I can think is that maybe one of your DirectX files was overwritten with the wrong version and I think that DirectX install will write over the files, where the web one will just tell you that you already have it installed and do nothing.

You could have security software on your computer that conflicts with it, maybe that you had installed before and uninstalled but it wasn't completely removed, but I have no way to identify what that may be. Perhaps you can download and run HiJackThis (https://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/) to create a log of what starts on your computer when you start it up. Might be some unknown firewall or antivirus software running there that could be disabled for further troubleshooting.