The Drunken Lizard Pub

I get "Windows Exception: Exception_Access_ Violation" with 1.03 right after the 'launch' screen. Nothing works. I even un-installed the game and re-installed it. Nothing. Does this mean I'll lose all my saves if I eventually (with your help, hopefully) get this to run? I never could find the location of the saved games even with turning on 'hidden files'. Whenever it got to 'AppData' I got some kind of error... This is a*major* bummer. Do I need to change something in the 'registry' to get this to work again? *Please Help*. Running Vista 64. Zero problems before I tried to turn on 'hidden files'. Sorry if this posted twice. D/l'd this from your site - paid thru 'Plimus Sales'. Thank You.

When did you download 1.03 and from what mirror?

Have you tried launching without any sound? (set to "null") Have you tried full-screen vs. Windowed? OpenGL, DirectX 7 or DirectX 9?

Play around with these settings and see if you can get the game to launch. Let me know what you find.

I d/l'd 1.03 today (May 26th) from Gamershell. Nothing that you suggested worked. I get an immediate 'Windows Exception: Exception_Access_Violation' msg right after launch. It also reverts to the normal settings I had at the launch screen when I go to try to load it again. I did mention, I hope, in the previous msg that the whole problem started when I tried to show the 'hidden' files so I could possibly back up my progress before installing 1.03. Now, a number of things don't work correctly on my computer including Mozilla Firefox which will allow me to read and post msgs, but I can't d/l anything (have to use IE for that). I reverted back to 'hiding files', BTW, but my computer is really screwed up now. Why can't the damn save files be unhidden in an easy place to find them. You know, the way Windows used to be before they 'improved' it? Do I have to re-install Windows (I have W7 now on disc) to get anything to work correctly again? And is there a way to find my saves and back them up before I go thru all that? I don't blame you guys for all these problems, but none of this would have happened if the save games were in an easily accessible spot. The game itself is great though, and I miss it already. Thanks for everything. I appreciate greatly any help or advice...

I think I can safely say that your problem is this: the game tries to save your configuration settings the moment you press "launch".

Your Windows account settings, or something that you might have tinkered with, is preventing this from happening. The game crashes without the ability to write to the hard drive.

This also explains why your settings are lost each time. They are not given the chance to be saved.

What kind of error are you getting when you try to access your AppData folder??

You might be able to get around it by editing the general.cfg file in your game directory and changing the savegame path to your game directory.

To: BasiliskWrangler
Thanks, but how do I go about fixing this problem? Is there a simple way to reset what I might have screwed up?
and...
To: CrazyBernie
Thanks, also. I was getting a lot of very strange looking symbols that looked kind of like a foreign language and I think there might have been a msg about something that was corrupted (not sure - but, nothing was wrong *before* I went to turn on 'hidden' files). Also, how would I go about changing the general.cfg to change where I save the games? I'm not exactly a computer whiz... Would this help me to at least salvage those saves I have now, so if I have to do a complete re-install of Windows I could pick up where I left off? Thanks very much to both of you. Just when I felt like I had made a real break-thru in the game (don't want to give away any spoilers) *this* has to happen. Really depressing. I love this game (as I did the first one). Thanks again.

Just in case this might shed any light on how my system is messed up, the following is the msg I get when I try to go on-line using Firefox:

"Could not initialize the application's security component. The most likely cause is problems with files in your application's profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full. It is recommended that you exit the application and fix the problem. If you continue to use this session, you might see incorrect application behaviour when accessing security features."

What happens after this is that it does load Firefox, except the initial screen is a bit screwed up - I have to click on 'make a new home page' (or something to that effect). It doesn't take much time, but I find that on all the sites I visit regularly, it doesn't remember any of my settings/passwords, etc. Even my e-mail page, I have to re-type my address and p/w every time. Also, no d/ls will work. I have to use IE for that.. Any ideas? BTW, I did completely remove Firefox from the computer and re-install it as I did with EB2. Also, some other games I have on the computer will boot and seem to work OK - others do not. Unfortunately, EB2 is one of them that does not. Thanks a lot.

You've got problems with the permissions with your profile, it looks like. The other cause of course is if you are actually running out of hard drive space but I'm assuming you've already checked for that.
Now because you say you are not very computer saavy, I'm going to suggest you create a new user on your computer for yourself. This will set up the correct profile permissions for the new user. From this user, you can run all the programs correctly. If you make that new user an administrator, you can be sure of having all the permissions you need for everything.
On Vista, you can create a new user using the Control Panel.

Warmskin wrote:To: BasiliskWrangler
Thanks, but how do I go about fixing this problem? Is there a simple way to reset what I might have screwed up?
and...
To: CrazyBernie
Thanks, also. I was getting a lot of very strange looking symbols that looked kind of like a foreign language and I think there might have been a msg about something that was corrupted (not sure - but, nothing was wrong *before* I went to turn on 'hidden' files). Also, how would I go about changing the general.cfg to change where I save the games? I'm not exactly a computer whiz... Would this help me to at least salvage those saves I have now, so if I have to do a complete re-install of Windows I could pick up where I left off? Thanks very much to both of you. Just when I felt like I had made a real break-thru in the game (don't want to give away any spoilers) *this* has to happen. Really depressing. I love this game (as I did the first one). Thanks again.

Unhiding your files should have no effect on your files... it's likely that by unhiding them, you uncovered a pre-existing problem... or you clicked on something else in addition to unhiding them.

If Bucket's suggestion doesn't do the trick, you might try performing a restore to an earlier date using the System Restore - also accessible in the Control Panel.

Thank you so much, 'Buckets', for your suggestion! I created a new user account and all is now working correctly. I had a problem at first as I had to re-register EB2 and it started me out with none of my saves intact. Funny thing was, this time the entire path to the 'saved games' folder was *not* hidden. I was able then to copy my saves from my old account and put them in their proper place on my new account. That still didn't work for some reason. I really was about to just give up and be happy that I could at least play the game (even though I would have to start from scratch). At that point I decided to try one more thing and instead of copying over the entire contents of the old saved games folder, I tried just copying one file, the one at the top which turned out to be the 'Quicksave' (the file name is not mentioned - just a number instead). Well, anyway it worked! And I had Quicksaved very close to my final save anyway. Everything works great now. I tried saving and reloading a number of times w/o any problems. To BasiliskWrangler and CrazyBernie: thank you also very much. All of you guys really helped me out of what was turning out to be a real bummer. Have a great weekend (I know I will) and thanks again for everything.

You're welcome Warmskin. I'm so glad it worked out and am especially glad you can enjoy this wonderful game we all get to play.