Crashes on Startup (0.44 and 0.45RC1) Windows 7

[Black_Pearl]

I can only gleam and try so much from the few threads there are on this, especially since they don't seem to resolve.

Such as:
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=4886
viewtopic.php?t=7051&p=56525

I've installed FreeOrion first 0.44, removed, and then 0.45RC1. Whether I try Windowed or Full Screen I see nothing and it crashes to the error below.

Code: Select all

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	APPCRASH
  Application Name:	FreeOrion.exe
  Application Version:	0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:	55db4f74
  Fault Module Name:	FreeOrion.exe
  Fault Module Version:	0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:	55db4f74
  Exception Code:	c0000005
  Exception Offset:	00210e56
  OS Version:	6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
  Locale ID:	2057
  Additional Information 1:	0a9e
  Additional Information 2:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:	0a9e
  Additional Information 4:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

My Setup:
Windows 7 64 Bit
AMD Radeon HD 6670

Using AMD Drivers not Windows Drivers (No problems, good framerate in WoW [no longer playing])

Microsoft Visual C++ 2008/2010/2012 & 2013 x86 and x64 bit installed, no problems.

Microsoft .NET 4.5 installed, no problems.

OpenGL 2.0 supported. (According to Specy.)


Not quite sure where to go from here to get this game working. As other games, GalCiv and Baldur's Gate also work without issue.


To people of the Future, if you find this and are having this problem and this thread title or post doesn't have a big 'solved' somewhere then you're probably not going to get this fixed and should give up trying to play FreeOrion on your current setup. Apologies.

[Dilvish]

Please post your freeorion.log file and your freeoriond.log file, located in the Config Directory, we'll take a look to see if they offer any clues.

[Black_Pearl]

Please post your freeorion.log file and your freeoriond.log file, located in the Config Directory, we'll take a look to see if they offer any clues.

Besides the config.xml and an empty 'save' directory I only have a short freeorion.log file in there.

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2015-08-28 21:57:01.110800 [debug] Client : Logger initialized
2015-08-28 21:57:01.112800 [debug] Client : v0.4.5 [build 2015-08-24.5fc20ff] MSVC 2013

(MSVC 2013 v12.0.3.0.5.01 x86 and x64 installed)

I've had a gander in
C:\ProgramData\ (No Free Orion Directory)
C:\Program Files\ (No Free Orion Directory)
C:\Program Files (x86)\FreeOrion\

And found no other similarly named log files.

[Geoff the Medio]

If something is crashing that soon after startup, there's probably not much we can do about it unless you can set up your system to compile from source to test things or step through code as it executes.

[Vezzra]

Well, there is of course one thing you can try to maybe get some more info on a crash that happens that early during program startup: running FO from the command line. Instructions on how to do that can be found in the first thread you linked, second post by Geoff:

In the start menu, run command, enter "cmd.exe" and cd to the directory where freeorion is installed, which is probably c:\Program Files\FreeOrion or something similar. In that directory, run "freeorion", and see if there is anything output on the command line when it crashes. If it's crashing before the log files can be created, that may be the only way to get an indication of source of the problem.

Pls try that and report back.

[AlanM]

for me it crashed on launch 4.5 RC3 on Windows 7

from the command prompt I see this message

AL lib: (EE) MMDevApiOpenPlayback: Device init failed: 0x80070490

[Geoff the Medio]

for me it crashed on launch 4.5 RC3 on Windows 7

Please locate freeorion.log in

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\FreeOrion

and post in a reply its contents from immediately after attempting to start the game.

Also, please make sure your video drivers are fully updated, from the manufacturer's website if possible.

from the command prompt I see this message

AL lib: (EE) MMDevApiOpenPlayback: Device init failed: 0x80070490

That is probably unrelated to the crash.

[Isengrim]

It may be the problem,the game won't start without an Audio device, and thats the error message it gives(I had the same problem the first time I tried to play)
do you have headphones or speakers plugged in, alanm?

[AlanM]

I don't normally have speakers on this computer. I plugged in someone's head set and now the game launches. There was no error log generated, btw, when I did have the failure. Just Windows reporting that the application stopped working. Maybe an improved error trap message is in order? "No audio device detected" sort of thing?

[Geoff the Medio]

I plugged in someone's head set and now the game launches.

Can you consistently (repeat it two or three times) make it work or crash at startup just by plugging in or unplugging the headset? My initial assumption is that it is coincidence if you've just tried it once.

[Vezzra]

Maybe an improved error trap message is in order? "No audio device detected" sort of thing?

Actually, having no audio device shouldn't crash FO at all, just give some error message and continue. However, there seems to be something amiss with the code that handles this error, because I got somilar problems when trying to get the FO build on Slackware Linux working too. The system I used didn't have any audio capabilities too, and instead of just giving an error message and continue, FO produced a segfault. On Slackware I got around that by compiling with clang/llvm instead of gcc, so I thought it was a compiler glitch. But now I'm wondering if clang is just clever enough to fix whatever glitch is actually in the FO code...

[defaultuser]

As I'm sure you know, a major cause of segfaults or exceptions is uninitialized variables. When you see a difference between compilers (or compiling debug vs. release), that can reflect differences in what sort of garbage the variables have and/or the results of accessing them.

[Isengrim]

I plugged in someone's head set and now the game launches.

Can you consistently (repeat it two or three times) make it work or crash at startup just by plugging in or unplugging the headset? My initial assumption is that it is coincidence if you've just tried it once.

I can, though it doesn't crash after the game starts and I pull the headphones out.

[Anodean]

FYI, I had the same issue and found this thread via the term MMDevApiOpenPlayback.

For an unrelated reason, I had disabled my only playback device. The game loaded fine once I re-enabled it. Note that this issue occurs both in the most recent stable build (2015-09) as well as the most current test build (2016-06).

I hope this helps others.

[Geoff the Medio]

The system I used didn't have any audio capabilities too, and instead of just giving an error message and continue, FO produced a segfault.

Can you figure out where the segfault occurred? Perhaps try stepping through InitOpenAL(...) in Sound.cpp or putting some debug output lines in there to see how far it gets?