Tides of War

Alright, so I have read the forums for info on this, and tried everything I can.

Booting in safe mode, firewalls and virus protections off, used the .exe that was listed to remove the protection mode, re-installed.... nothing is working.

Here is what is happening.

I have the 2.1.3 version of USA ERT installed. I am trying to patch to Gold, US version, but every time I try, the patcher boots up, does the initial patcher scan, and as soon as it starts backing up files, or installing files, the patcher freezes. Completely not responding at all. I have tried installing each patch prior to the Gold patch, same thing. Every patcher locks up on me.

ERT was working fine on my system before the patch attempts. After trying the patcher each time, trying to run it again supplys me with a corrupted file replace message and closes. I have had to reinstall ERT 6 times. No changes with the patching so far.

I have tried direct installs of the Gold patch. Still no luck. I am not sure what could be going on. All I can say is that when I view the details of the error report, it mentions HungApp, and an error in the patcher mini-dump file. Not sure if that helps.

I'd like to get it fixed. I have tried all I know. All I have read. All I have guessed.

Please help... Thanks

EndeavourCmdr.

As a P.S. I have a homebuilt PC. Its a Perl Intel Motherboard, Socket 478 P4 - 3.0 gig, 1 meg L2 Cache 800fsb Hyperthreading, 512 megs DDR400 ram, GeForce FX 5200, AGP x8 256 meg vid card, West Digi 70 gig HD, SoundBlaster sound card.

Running Win XP Home edition, no Service packs installed on this machine.

Thought maybe that might help too.

First of all, lets be clear. Backup any save game files you want to keep for ERT.

None of the other patches in your system will make it work, in fact, they will cause the GOLD to fail miserably.. in otherwords, make sure you have a fresh clean install from the original disk, then put the GOLD on, nothing else.. all other patches were made "OBSOLETE" and "INCOMPATIBLE" with the gold.

Now that clears up part of your message for sure, so let us know how it goes.

If this is one of the methods you have already tried, make sure you did a complete uninstall (except for save game files).

(edit: if you are using any third party protection scheme removal tools, stop.

Get rid of those..

Try using the dreamcatcher starforce removal, (search dreamcatcher forums as one location for the tool) and go back to complete uninstall and fresh retail disk with GOLD as the only patch).

Ok, well I have already tried uninstalling the entire game and using starforce removal with antivirus off.... but I just tried it again. Here is exactly what I did, and exactly what happened.

Disabled antivirus and spyware and firewall.

Ran starforce removal tool posted on this site with the patch locations.

Went to add/remove programs and selected to remove Enigma RT.

Deleted the program folder for Dreamcatcher manually.

Rebooted the system.

Disabled antivirus and spyware and firewall.

Ran the installer for US/English (2.1.3) retail ERT from the CD autorun

Installed ERT to default location.

Did not install DirectX8 (Im using 9.0)

Did not install Speach Recognition.

Rebooted the system.

Disabled antivirus and spyware and firewall.

Ran patch for dreamcatcher (2.1.3) to gold patch english.

Patcher started up, verified files

Patcher got to 8% when installing Starforce.dll, and stopped responding.

Error report as follows:

szAppName: Epatch.exe

szAppVer: 1.0.0.13

szModName: hungapp

szModVer: 0.0.0.0

offset: 00000000

It happens just like this every time I try. I dont understand at all what would make it suddenly stop responing over and over.

1: you should remove Enigma before the STF driver.

2: have you recently installed any windows updates?

3: installed other software?

4: do you have any CDRom emulators such as Daemon Tools, Starfrack, PacketCD, Nero Virtual Drive, Alc120% etc ?

5: Which AV tool are you using?

1: you should remove Enigma before the STF driver.

2: have you recently installed any windows updates?

3: installed other software?

4: do you have any CDRom emulators such as Daemon Tools, Starfrack, PacketCD, Nero Virtual Drive, Alc120% etc ?

5: Which AV tool are you using?

No, I have all Windows Updates turned off.

I have not installed any other software since ERT

I do not use any emulation software, im using a plain 52x Memorex CD-Rom

For AV, I am using Norton Internet Security 2003, and Norton ANtivus 2003, both with up to date virus definitions.

You know, with all the specific things that have to be done just to install a patch, you would think that SOME kind of documentation would be included.

Ill try uninstalling Enigma first this time. . .

Be back in a few minutes, probably.

..... Ok, and Im back. Same thing. I have tried everything. I know I am doing it right. I have even tried using the taskmanager to close ALL open applications and processes that arent needed by the system. Same thing every time. Patcher gets to completely finishing the installation of the Starforce.DLL, and the Total progress is at 8%, and the patcher freezes. I have also tried downloading from Gamespot instead of Filefront thinking it might have just been a corrupt file. Nope. Same exact thing.

Im lost.

That is very strange. Please send a dxdiag report and a starforce report (take the cd out and try to run the game) to support@warfleet.net - we can probably help.

Indeed that is strange, I would blame your Norton products, they have a reputation of doing odd things such as still be running even they are deactived/shutdown.

Let us know what the reply from warfleet will be.

You can also try to uninstall Norton (personally I would and never install such thing again, there are plenty of better tools than those)

You know, with all the specific things that have to be done just to install a patch, you would think that SOME kind of documentation would be included.

This isnt an everyday issue, infact you are the first one to report that it specifically is the STF dll file.
Off this topic, you should use windows update, as there are many voulnerabilities on your system if it is unpatched.

Ok, email has been sent to Support@warfleet.net from my hotmail account.

I sent the two files together in a .zip file, because my email service was only letting me attach one text file otherwise.

Hope you can figure this out. I sure cant. Lol.

Thanks, EndeavourCmdr

zip files don't pass our filter, make it an rar file or change the extension to zik or something...

Ok I can make it rar