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Launcher fails silently

yogsodothyogsodoth
edited June 2009 in Game Support
OK - so I played both seasons of Sam & Max and I loved them. So I went and got a season ticket for Strong Bad, and I played the first game, and I loved it.

But now, I do not love Strongbadia the Free (download version). It won't run. And now, none of my other Telltale games will run either. They all get to the launcher screen, I hit Launch Game, and the process silently dies with no feedback whatsoever. I have watched it vanish from my process list and been slightly annoyed.

I'm on Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit, e-vga GeForce 7800 GT vid card. All other DirectX-based content runs fine, all games, python-ogre, all libraries, etc. I am running AVG Free Edition 8.0 antivirus. I have tried:

1. New video drivers
2. Rebooting (obviously)
3. Uninstalling and reinstalling
4. SecuROM reset (from the forums, didn't do anything, game launcher still acted like I was registered)
5. Disabling antivirus
6. Shutting down every other single running process that wasn't necessary to Vista
7. Shutting down every spare service I could find
8. Running as Administrator
9. Shutting down UAC

And still, no joy. We are not amused. I can pretty much guess that this is a SecuROM glitch. I run DAEMON Tools but it has been turned off for months now (and never interfered with Sam & Max anyway). I even tried uninstalling DAEMON Tools - still no joy.

I can try finding a thread debugger and tracing it, but I was kind of hoping not to have to do that, and it probably wouldn't help if it forks another process while launching. I could also totally wipe my machine and start fresh with a clean Vista registry, but since it's a 3 1/2 hour install, I really don't want to. I bet it would work though.

Are there any reg keys associated with either SecuROM or the game itself that don't get removed on uninstall? Any ideas?

Comments

  • KevinKevin Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2008
    Sorry to hear about this. We haven't changed anything about the launcher from Ep1 to Ep2. Could you try re-downloading an older game from you "My Telltale" page and see if it behaves the same way?

    -Kevin
  • yogsodothyogsodoth
    edited September 2008
    Hm.... nope, no love. Re-downloaded Culture Shock and it, too gets to the launcher and then dies silently on launch.

    *sobbing* I don't wanna re-install my OS! I'm too lazy!
  • yogsodothyogsodoth
    edited September 2008
    Installing WinDbg.... will try and get a decent trace of what's failing.
  • yogsodothyogsodoth
    edited September 2008
    Here's the debug tool output, if it's any help.... this dumps as soon as I push the Launch Game button...
    (980.1e10): Access violation - code c0000005 (first chance)
First chance exceptions are reported before any exception handling.
This exception may be expected and handled.
eax=00180010 ebx=74a30000 ecx=00180001 edx=77f29a94 esi=00001000 edi=00000000
eip=7776a473 esp=01c2ea64 ebp=01c2ea90 iopl=0         nv up ei pl zr na pe nc
cs=001b  ss=0023  ds=0023  es=0023  fs=003b  gs=0000             efl=00010246
kernel32!IsBadReadPtr+0x3c:
7776a473 8a01            mov     al,byte ptr [ecx]          ds:0023:00180001=??
  • kaffebaggelkaffebaggel
    edited June 2009
    Bumping this as i am having the same problem with my telltale games on my new laptop. The launcher just dies and nothing tells me if there has been an error or anything. It just...disappears.
  • jmmjmm
    edited June 2009
    A few ideas of the top of my head:

    Did you try disabling suspicious IE add-ons?
    Did you try resetting IE's settings? zone settings?

    Did you try creating another account and launching a game using that account?
    Is DEP enabled?
  • kaffebaggelkaffebaggel
    edited June 2009
    jmm wrote: »
    A few ideas of the top of my head:

    Did you try disabling suspicious IE add-ons?
    Did you try resetting IE's settings? zone settings?

    Did you try creating another account and launching a game using that account?
    Is DEP enabled?

    I've tried (well, to the best of my ability anyway. I'm not all that good with computers nowadays ;) ) all of those except creating a new account and running it through that as i don't know how i can log in via a new account in the launcher. I don't get that log-in window anymore.

    I'm perplexed and annoyed that i can't get any telltale goodness on my laptop. Looks it'll have to be the wii for TMI for me.
  • kaffebaggelkaffebaggel
    edited June 2009
    Well a full reinstall of Vista did the trick, finally i can point & click again! ;)
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