Unable to install

[Guest sithding]

Whenever I try to install either the demo or the game, I eat BIOS. I don't get a Blue Screen of Death, an error message or anything - my cpu just restarts. My specs are well over the min requirements, and I just went through and put the latest drivers for everything on my pc (hoping that would fix the problem), and still no luck...

 

With the demo - it unpacks everything, and sets up the installer, and then boom! Restarts.

 

With the game CD, as soon as it tries to autorun, it restarts.

 

It's rather annoying.

 

Oh, and if anyone is planning on purchasing their copy form the local WalMart in Castle Rock, CO, don't!! All of their copies have 2 disc 2's and no disc 1's. (found that one out the hard way...)

[Guest malius]

I have the exact same problem. Plenty of hardrive, specs well beyond whats needed, new drivers, latest DirectX....and a 40 dollar game that crashes my machine everytime I try to install (autorun).

 

I have plenty of other games that work just fine, and the disk is okay because I installed it on my work machine to test and it works fine there.

 

The lead designer mentioned something about installer problems to be included in the patch (patch that runs before installing the game itself???) anyway....

 

I have emails into tech support, I'll let you know when, or if I get a response.

Mal

 

Gave up after 3 hours of computer crashing, driver updates, sys tests.

[Guest Gundartboard]

Try posting your system specifications, this helps.

[Guest sithding]

AMD Athalon at 1.2 Ghz

32M GeForce2 MX400

256M ram

SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer

Maxtor 40Gig hard drive

DVD drive (can't remember brand)

DVD decoder card (Holywood RealMagic something)

HP CD Writer

 

Like Malius said, every other game I own works fine. Tried installing it on another PC at work, and it worked fine there, but every time I try it at home, I eat the BIOS. Stick the CD in, wait a couple of seconds, it starts reading the CD, and then my PC is telling me about my 32 meg video card and the energy star complint something and detecting primary master, primary slave, secondary master.........

 

What really gets me though is that there is no error message or anything indicating that something went wrong. It's like someone is hitting the reset button on the front of my PC.

[Guest malius]

AMD K7 900MHz

BC133KT KT133 K7 Motherboard

128MB PC133 SDRAM

Maxtor 30.7 GB

Jaton 3DForce B-32 NVIDIA TNT2 32 MB Video

52x Speed Delta IDE CD-ROM

32 Bit Wave Table Integrated 3D sound

 

Exactly like sithding, as soon as autorun plays the cd, hard-crash (like someone hit reset), I can actually disable autorun, and explore the cd, read the readme, ect, but as soon as I try setup..crash.

 

30hrs still no response from Tech Support, well see.

[Guest malius]

Just to let you know Im still working on this with tech, so far no resolution...but they have been prompt and helpful very nice to see from software support;)

Mal

 

I'll let you know if we can get this resolved

[Guest sithding]

Man, I'm about ready to give up here.... Still no luck. I went through and reformatted my PC - fresh install of everything - and I still can't install the stupid game on my computer. Try to autorun either disk - restart.

 

Oh, what I'd give for an actual error message!!

[Guest malius]

Still working with tech to try to solve this problem for myself, here is what has been suggested and perhaps it will help others with install problems. Frustrating;(

 

 

Email 1:

 

- Click on the Windows Start button and choose Run.

- Type MSCONFIG and click OK.

- Please select " Selective Startup "

- Please remove the check marks next to Process Config.Sys, Process

Autoexec.bat and Load Startup Group Items.

 

After making these changes, you will need to click OK and then restart the

computer for these changes to take effect.

 

If this does not resolve the problem, please go back into Msconfig and

re-check those boxes and then select Normal Startup, clicking OK and

restarting the computer to go back to your original startup.

 

Email 2:

 

I seem to think it might be related to the InstallShield that is suppose to

initialize when you click on the INSTALL button from the Launcher. Could you

attempt to reinstall the .2183 Detonator XP Driver for your TNT2? This uses

the same InstallShield version and I am curious to see if the same problem

occurs.

 

Email 3:

 

Ok, let's continue on. The following link may resolve this issue, you'll

need to download a file and install it onto your machine:

 

http://Http://www.microsoft.com/com/dcom/dcom98/download.asp

 

Basically, the above update helps out with various InstallShield issues and

at this point, it's worth a shot.

 

I also noticed that your monitor is setup as a Plug and Play Monitor - You

might want to look into setting this up with the correct .INF driver for

your model type. Contact your computer manufacturer for further assistance

or click on the following link which leads to our website and has step by

step instructions on how to do this:

 

http://support.lucasarts.com/trg/tgd.asp?id=2139&g=109&s=12

 

We'd like to verify if any devices on your system are sharing the same IRQ

(Interrupt Request) which might help us further diagnose the problem for

you. In order to do this, the following information will assist you in

passing this information on to us:

 

Click on the Windows Start Menu and choose Run

In the Open Field, please type in MSINFO32 and click on OK

Next, click on the + next to Hardware Resources under System Summary on the

left-hand side within the MSINFO32 Utility

Select the IRQ listing which should then show you a list of all available

IRQ's on your system in the Window on the right-hand side.

 

Email 4:

 

Thanks for the info. Try deleting all files in your system's temp folder

(the default location of the active temp directory on Windows 95/98 systems

is "c:\windows\temp"), and then try reinstalling. First however, you will

need to make sure that your system is set up to display system files, which

are often specified as hidden files. Open the "My Computer" window, select

View > Options on the menu bar, and on the VIEW tab make sure that the "Show

all files" option is selected.

 

If deleting all files in your system's temp folder ("c:\windows\temp") does

not resolve the problem, then it may be due to your system not currently

having a specified, active TEMP directory.

 

To correct the problem, please try the following:

Go into your AUTOEXEC.BAT file (located in the root directory of your C:

drive) and add the following line:

 

SET TEMP=C:\TEMP1

 

If you are unsure how to edit a file, please follow these instructions:

 

The program that you will need to use is called Notepad (it is a text

editor). While in Windows 95/98, you can get to Notepad by clicking on

PROGRAMS (off of the start menu) and go to ACCESSORIES, or use the RUN

command in the Start Menu, and type "notepad" there.

 

Once you are in Notepad, you would want to go up to the FILE command and

choose "OPEN." From there, it may list the FILE TYPE as being *.TXT. If it

does, you will need to click on it to change it to ALL FILES. The file that

you will need to open is called the AUTOEXEC.BAT It is located in the root

directory of your C: drive (which means that you will find it at "c:\").

 

Once you have this file open, you can then add the SET TEMP line above. Once

you have completed this process you will need to go up to the FILE command

and choose "SAVE" then "EXIT."

 

You will then need to create a new folder on your C drive called TEMP1. The

easiest way to do this would be to open up the EXPLORER, click on the C:

drive, and then go to the FILE command at the top of the screen, and select

NEW > FOLDER.

 

You will see a folder appear on the right side of your screen. Name this

folder "TEMP1" and hit ENTER.

 

You will then need to restart your machine from the Windows Shut Down

screen.

 

After you have restarted, try installing the game once again. Please let me

know If you continue to encounter any problems.

 

If everything goes okay, you may want to then remove the above SET TEMP line

from your autoexec.bat file, and delete the TEMP1 directory from your hard

drive.

 

 

Please also delete the Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Engine

folder and then rerun the setup. Remember, only delete the Engine Folder.

 

Make sure that you are using the latest version of the InstallShield engine.

To install the latest engine, see Knowledge Base article Q105097, INFO:

Install the Latest Version of Ikernel.exe.

http://support.installshield.com/kb/view.asppcode=CLASS630PEE&articleid=Q104985

[Guest sithding]

this is funny.. hehehe

Anywho...

 

Wow. All that and still no fix?? Well, I kinda feel a little better - it's not some stupid thing like a piece of dust on the CD... Just updated the nvidia drivers - and that did nothing. Hafta try the installshield thing. But, not expecting it'll work.

 

There's gotta be some sort of reward for having the craziest problem that tech support can't fix. Like getting a pc that can actually play the game!

Probably not...

[Guest malius]

My latest LTS response:

 

The game wouldn't cause your system to reboot automatically, definitely not

a bug, I believe it's a system specific issue. I noticed that your Ethernet

Card and TNT2 Video Card are sharing IRQ 11, two devices sharing one IRQ can

cause erratic behavior on a system. You might want to contact your computer

manufacturer and see what they can do for you as far as assigning one of

these devices to an available IRQ (one that isn't being shared with another

device) on your system.

 

Looks like they have sadly given up;(...They blame this on specific system issues, yet I have 10+ recent games that use installshield and work just fine on my system (no problems what so ever). And reading around different threads on here many people seem to have various crash/install related issues with this game;(

[Guest malius]

Hey Sithding try something, explore the cd and go to the Install dir, then try to run syscheck. That crashes my machine just like a full install would, and seems to be the component run after installshield (try running setup from GameData and my process gets to the stars screen like with the demo.

Still talking with tech, maybe a miracle could happen and we figure this out;)

Mal

[Guest sithding]

Syscheck fed me BIOS, and when I ran setup from GameData, I got to the stars screen, then ate BIOS again.

 

My guess would be that we're having the same problem...

 

I got so fed up with Battleground not working that I went back to MS Combat Flight Sim II, and, guess what!! My joystick doesn't work. Oh, but it's not installed. That's right - I reformatted my PC... Install joystick.. Oh, new hardware detected - installing the software for you new hardware... Installing joystick emulation.. For a couple of minutes... Oh, wait, the mouse isn't moving anymore, either. Great... restart..

 

Now I can't use the joystick at all cause the joystick emulation causes my PC to hang. (???) I wonder if the two are related?

 

Anywho - I'm not a big fan of my computer right now....

[em_wizard]

Hi guys i have watching your post to see if you could possibly help me out any. I get to the stars screen on the install and then setup terminates abnormally.Formating the pc didn't help either. And lucas arts support has been a joke so far. I have basically been given the same suggestions that you have. If this help because it sounds as if are problems are related i do happen to get a message right before the stars page closes. I get an unknown windows error and it has number code that i will post later. I bet its all related but you guys don't get it because you can't get past syscheck where as i can. My system says that i should be able to run the game fine. Yeah thats a laugh. The mysterious thing is on my other pc(the one i don't want it on) it runs fine when i tested it. I will post that windows number error for you when i get home later to see if you guys could research and find out anything else later. So far on microsofts site i haven't had much luck. I don't think it s windows problem because the format didn't work and its just on this game. I am running Win98se and beleive it or not i can get Empire Earth to run and not this game. Thats a mind blower.

[Guest malius]

Well I finally got it installed, not sure if it was luck, or my computer just finally gave up to my relenting install assult.

The last 2 things I did was:

1) Enable DMA for my CD-ROM drive

2) Restored Defaults on my Bios (my manufactorer probably changed some stuff).

 

Im up and running, hopefully those 2 help

Mal

[Guest sithding]

Reset the BIOS? wow. Never woulda thoughta that.. I'm pretty sure that the DMA thingamjig is on on my PC, but I'll check that, too..

 

So, Malius, was it worth the fight?

[Guest IdLe_WorkeR]

Sithding, malius, from your posts it is not clear what motherboards you each have. If the chipset on the motherboards are made by via, then there are various driver and bios issues that often need to be attended to. In particular, crashing to desktop or worse while trying to load megabytes of data from the cd, especially if it is on IDE channel two, is an issue with via chitsets and the mb manufacturer that make them.

 

Here is the url for updating your chipset drivers to the latest version: http://www.viaarena.com/

 

If you need to update your mb bios, check the manufacturer's site for the latest version for your model/version of your board.

 

And there are web pages that are compediums of information about various chipsets. If, for example, your mb was made by Abit with the via KT133A chipset, check out this FAQ: http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm

 

Hope this kind of approach is helpful to others with similar problems.