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[W&G] PC performs reset when I click on "New Game"

NightsurferNightsurfer
edited June 2009 in Game Support
I had completed W&G without any problems two days ago, but today, when I wanted to impress a friend, the game does not work any longer: The second I click on "New Game" in the main menu, my PC performs a reset! - If I click on preview, I see the shapes of W&G moving for about 15 seconds (indicating that something is loading in the background) and then the PC also resets without any warning.

This is what I did between successfully completing the game and the time it crashes every time now:
  • I uninstalled several old games and applications to get some free space on my hard drive.
  • I ran a registry cleaner tool, as many applications leave lots of stuff in the registry when removed.
  • I installed the second episode of "Sam & Max" (season 2) that obviously downloaded some DirectX updates from Microsoft.
So my first though was of course that one of the uninstallers or the registry cleaner might have removed some files / registry keys W&G need. Besides something might have gone wrong with the DirectX update. - Therefore I did the following:
  • Fully uninstalled W&G
  • Fully uninstalled DirectX (using a freeware tool) and installed it again.
  • Re-installed the latest drivers for my graphic card.
  • Re-installed W&G
But unfortunately the effect remains the same: My PC resets whenever I ry to start a new W&G game!
On the other had side, "Sam & Max" still performs perfectly and I also tried some other games using DirectX. - Everything works just fine, except W&G, so I am not convinced that this is really a problem with my hardware or some Windows components.

Any idea what to do? - Does the game writes a log file somewhere or can you set it into a debug mode where such a log is activated, so I could find out about the last action executed before the crash?

Besides I noticed that even after I had uninstalled W&G completely, I was not asked to register the game again later, so I guess W&G also leaves some registry keys behind when it is removed. Maybe these entries have been damaged somehow by the registry cleaner and it is the remaining copy protection that causes the crash!? - Is there a way/tool to really completely remove all changes the W&G setup does to the registry, including all the files for the copy protection?

Thanks in advance for every hint to solve this problem, as I am really getting desperate what else to try, and I guess I will not be able to play the next episode unless I manage to fix this before...

Comments

  • ZiglioNZZiglioNZ
    edited March 2009
    Quite a few people with different setups are running into similar issues.
    I wonder if they tested the game at all with common xp configurations...
    (Of course they did, I'm jocking... but still puzzled to see such serious crash errors)
  • WillWill Telltale Alumni
    edited March 2009
    Personally, I like Revo Uninstaller. Just use it to uninstall the game, and it will then go through and make sure all registry and related files are cleaned out too. It's been safe every time I've used it.

    As for why it is rebooting, it sounds like it is definitely hardware related (it is almost always drivers or hardware that cause a system to reboot). If using revo to uninstall it doesn't fix things, let me know.
  • NightsurferNightsurfer
    edited March 2009
    Will wrote: »
    If using revo to uninstall it doesn't fix things, let me know.
    The revo uninstaller obviously does not remove the registry entries for the copy protection used by the game: I have never been asked to register again after I unlocked the game for the first time, even when fully removed from the hard drive, PC rebooted and re-installed. So there must be something left W&G installed during the initial unlock procedure. :(

    Anyway, no matter how often I have tried to remove and re-install DirectX, the drivers for my nVidia graphic card or the game itself, W&G keeps rebooting my PC as soon as I click on "New Game", while the "Sam & Max" episodes or any other game I have tried do not cause any problem with my configuration...

    I still suspect that either my registry cleaning tool damaged the copy protection somehow (and therefore would like to know how to remove these "SecuROM" entries Kaspersky complains about when I run the game, so I could install the game really from scratch) or the latest DirectX 9 update is somehow incompatible: Note that Microsoft released a new version on 3/23, just 5 days ago. I am not sure if Telltale had a beta version of this update available for testing during development, but this version had definitely not been installed on my PC while W&G was still working some days before.
  • LeakLeak
    edited March 2009
    Nightsurfer wrote: »
    Anyway, no matter how often I have tried to remove and re-install DirectX, the drivers for my nVidia graphic card or the game itself, W&G keeps rebooting my PC as soon as I click on "New Game", while the "Sam & Max" episodes or any other game I have tried do not cause any problem with my configuration...
    Have you considered that it might not be the graphics card?

    What happens if you deactivate your soundcard in the Device Manager prior to starting the game?

    np: SCSI-9 - Vesna, Lastic & Elliott (Easy As Down)
  • WillWill Telltale Alumni
    edited March 2009
    Well first of all if it really were a securom issue, it would be crashing as soon as you try to open the launcher, not the game. So I honestly don't think it is that. I'm not sure why Revo didn't work, but if you are really determined to remove the registry keys, everything should be stored in the Telltale Games folders in CURRENT_USER and LOCAL_MACHINE.

    As for actual solutions to the problem, have you tried using Omega's version of the driver? I'd be curious to see if that fixes the problem. Another thing you can try is running a clean boot before starting the game, but I don't see why that would be causing hardware issues. At any rate:

    To Boot Clean in Windows XP

    1. Click Start --> Run --> Type MSCONFIG --> Click OK
    2. On the General tab, choose Selective Startup
    3. Uncheck Process SYSTEM.INI file
    4. Uncheck Process WIN.INI file
    5. Uncheck Load Startup Items
    6. Click on the Services tab
    7. At the bottom, check Hide All Microsoft Services
    8. Uncheck all boxes in the window or click the button labeled Disable All
    6. Click OK
    7. Click Restart
    8. After reboot, run game to see if it works.

    After performing the necessary steps, restore your system by doing the following:

    1. Click Start --> Run --> Type MSCONFIG--> Click OK
    2. On the General tab, choose Normal Startup
    3. Click OK
    4. Click YES, when asked to restart your computer
  • NightsurferNightsurfer
    edited March 2009
    Hello Will,

    thanks for the advice. - Here is what I tried today:

    1) Uninstalled original nVidia drivers + installed Omega's drivers

    Result: Game did not crash any longer, but every minute or so the screen got frozen (with the sound still playing) for at least 30 seconds.

    2) uninstalled Omega's drivers + installed original drivers 182.08 again.

    Result: Game again crashed immediately when pressing the "new game" button (PC performed reset)

    3) uninstalled rev. 182.08 of the drivers and installed an older version (rev. 175.16)

    Result: Everything runs very smoothly now, even with "graphic details" set to "6" (I had used only "4" so far).

    So the problem has definitely been caused by the graphics drivers. I plan to download the latest revision (182.08) fresh from the web once again tomorrow to check if this is a general problem with that revision of the driver or if maybe the installation file I had downloaded before was somehow corrupt. - But it is getting late here in Germany and for now I am more than happy to have a working solution again! :)
  • QuantaQuanta
    edited March 2009
    Hallo, Nightsurfer! Ich bin auch aus Deutschland. :)

    I also have a nVidia card (GTS 8800 GTS 640) and I use Win XP 32. I recommend you the 181.22 driver as the latest stable for any GeForce of the 7th / 8th or 9th generation. The 182.xx ones cause bluescreens for me, too.
  • NightsurferNightsurfer
    edited March 2009
    Quick update (nVidia GeForce 6200 + WinXP SP3 + W&G 1.0.0.15):

    nVidia driver rev. 175.16 -> works perfectly
    nVidia driver rev. 178.24 -> works perfectly
    nVidia driver rev. 181.22 -> crashes my PC
    nVidia driver rev. 182.08 -> crashes my PC

    I could not find a driver revision between 178 and 181 yet to try, in case there is any. - Does anybody know where to find a revision history for nVidia's officially released drivers? I would try some more revisions then. Right now it seems whatever causes the problem has been introduced between revisions 17x and 18x.
  • QuantaQuanta
    edited March 2009
    There is no other official driver between 178.24 and 181.20.

    I would stick with the 178.24 if they work. They are not too old and i guess that nVidia just ditched proper support for the 6th generation in the newer ones in favor to the newer generations. GeForce 6 was released in summer 2004, which is an aeon ago in the world of graphics chips.
  • NightsurferNightsurfer
    edited April 2009
    On the 2nd of April nVidia released driver revison 182.50, so I gave it a try:
    To my surprise the game works with this driver now, but the performance for the same graphic level I had used before ("7") was worse than with revision 178.24. - Therefore I tried to reduce the graphic level to "4", and guess what: My PC performed a reset again! :(

    I played a bit with the settings and found that this effect is reproducible:
    With the graphic level set to "7" or higher, the game works, but with lower performance than the 178.24 driver for my GeForce 6200.
    With the graphics level set to anything lower than "7", the game crashes immediately after clicking "new game" with the 18x.x drivers, while the 17x.x driver does not cause any trouble.

    I will stay with the 178.24 driver now, as that one works with all graphic levels and shows better performance for level "7" than the latest drivers!
  • NightsurferNightsurfer
    edited June 2009
    I just want to mention that this is still the same for episodes 2 and 3, though I had installed Windows XP from scratch on my PC in the meantime:

    nVidia GeForce 6200 + newer driver versions 18x.x + graphic details "4" = PC reboots! :mad:
    nVidia GeForce 6200 + older driver versions 17x.x + graphic details "4" = Works perfect! ;)
  • WillWill Telltale Alumni
    edited June 2009
    Just for the record, that's definitely a problem on nvidia's side. Nothing in any game should ever cause a pc to reboot. If your system is rebooting or blue screening, it's pretty much always a driver issue.
  • NightsurferNightsurfer
    edited June 2009
    Will wrote: »
    Just for the record, that's definitely a problem on nvidia's side.
    I did not want to blame Telltale, but just provide a workaround for others who run into the same trouble. By the way, another option is to set the graphics details to "6" or higher. In this case the newer driver versions also work. But on my system the performance is too low then.
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