HOW DO I UPDATE FLASH!!

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: XLegion
I un-installed the game via the Control Panel in Windows XP. I sent Eric my dxdiag file but I have not heard from him. I will try and post it here.

Sorry, the internet here went out yesterday morning and was just restored an hour ago.

[Erik Rutins]

XLegion,

ORIGINAL: XLegion
Not long after, Matrix released a small mini-patch that CORRECTED this problem. I installed it and AGAIN the game worked fine. BUT, after a time I decided there was much about the game that I didn't like and wanted to wait for a more comprehensive patch that would fix many of the HISTORICAL anomalies that I did not care for.

OK, now we come to the BETA patch. I downloaded it. I installed it. And now NOTHING WORKS!. I DID NOT un-install the game nor change anything about my computer. The common denominator was the BETA PATCH.

Not necessarily. Did you run the game right before installing the Beta Patch? If you hadn't been playing for a while, something else might have changed on your system that caused this problem and you didn't realize it until you installed the beta patch. The fact that the original game installation without the beta patch does not work is a clear indication of this. The patch does nothing but replace files in the game folder, so there's no way it can screw up your system or screw up your original installation before you've even reinstalled the beta patch.

My first suggestion is to upgrade your audio drivers. First, they are from 2004. Second, you've reported some sound issues from the beginning and if something got messed up here, it could cause the game to crash.

Second, update your video drivers, which are from 2005. Even if these drivers worked fine before, if something went wrong with them, an update will hopefully clear that out.

Finally, make sure that when you reinstall, you have turned off all background anti-virus or other security software. This is generally the #1 reason for a corrupted installation.

[XLegion]

Eric:

I have just updated all Medion drivers. Un-installed Forge of Freedom for about the 5th time.

Re-installed. Same symptoms. Crashes on load up.

The following DO WORK on my system

TALONSOFT - All Civil War Games

HPS - All games

ACTIVISION - Rome Total War - Gun

SLITHERINE - Legion - Spartan

SONALYSTS - Dangerous Waters - 688 Attack Sub - Fleet Command

ATARI - Civilization

SIERRA - Caesar IV

LUCASARTS - Outlaws

I-MAGIC - All Great Battles of History games
MATRIX - War in the Pacific - Crown of Glory - For Liberty - Tin Soldiers - Caesar

and many others, I could go on and on and on

WHAT DOES NOT WORK

FORGE OF FREEDOM - Period

I think the common denominator for a problem is 'Forge of Freedom' - wouldn't you think???

Look at the games THAT ARE running on my system perfectly. You can see that my system can easily run many different games from many different manufacturers with no problem. INCLUDING AT LEAST FOUR FROM MATRIX ITSELF!!!

I have installed and un-installed and cleared out the registry on this game now at least five times!!!!

Apologies for the frustration but it is definitely there and real. This experience is undermining my whole confidence in any future Matrix products. Also can we get this thread where it properly should reside - in Forge of Freedom problems NOT Flash player!!!

[Barrold]

While I understand the frustration of not getting the game to work, the seemingly unique nature of your problems should lead you to wonder what is wrong with your system rather than what is wrong with FoF and Matrix Games in general.  Well perhaps not wrong, but unique in the equipment or setup of this system.  Looking through your system file, my suspicion runs towards your audio card and your symptoms don't lead me to lessen the suspicion. 

Perhaps Eric can provide some feedback on whether the C-Audio dealy-do is known to cause issues or not.  Maybe you could switch the card out with a more generic one and see if it behaves the same.

Good luck in resolving the issue

[ericbabe]

I don't doubt that FOF is not running on your system.  However, since FOF does run on a clean-install XP home edition system with SP2 the problem is probably not one involving FOF running on XP but seems more likely to involve something idiosyncratic with your system.  I can't just "fix FOF" -- I need to figure out what it might be that is particular to your configuration.  I spent an hour this morning comparing the file list you forwarded to us with the master list, but so far haven't found anything that looked suspicious with the install.  If you'd like, I can send you a version of the .exe file that will trace its progress during game load so we can get a better idea where during the load it's crashing.  All the loading sequence is fairly homogenous: it initializes a chunk of memory, finds a file on the hard drive, puts that file into memory, repeat.  If you're crashing 75% of the way through this, chances are that the problem isn't with the process itself but with one of the files or with the allocation of the block of memory at that point, or something similar.

[XLegion]

Yes, by all means send me that file. At this point I am willing to try almost anything short of 'format C'

gcollins@magma.ca

[XLegion]

OK, un-installed the game for what I believe is the 7th time now.

Something changed but it is still not working. Now the game loads until the blue line bar at the bottom is finished or at least it is at the end. But the screen just stays there and nothing happens. After about 3 or 4 mintues of this I hit CONT-ALT-DEL to get to task managed to see what the game is doing. Task manager says "running". Which of course it isnt'. But, giving it the benefit of the doubt I "switch to" Forge of Freedom and the screen is still there.

Of course, I then after to CONT-ALT-DEL again to "end task" and get out of the loop.

What now?

As for the suggestion that someone made that I should be looking into another sound card. Well, that is so absurd I will not get into it. My configuration seems to work for every game and manufacturer EXCEPT Forge of Freedom, so I think that is a logical place to look.

[Erik Rutins]

Please be patient until Eric sends you the exe he discussed. I realize this is frustrating, but frankly the problem is unique.

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: XLegion

OK, un-installed the game for what I believe is the 7th time now.

There is no need to uninstall and reinstall the game unless the experts tell you to. There is a greater chance of causing further problems than curing existing ones if you keep doing this, not to mention that it's simply a waste of your time.

[ericbabe]

Hmmm, the fact that the behavior changed after you uninstalled/reinstalled the game makes me wonder whether there's a problem with the way that the files are being copied to your harddrive.  Have you scanned your harddrive for bad sectors?  I will try to get the trace-exe to you on Monday and hopefully we can figure out exactly where in the process things are not working.

[gunnergoz]

Kudos to the Team for superb support efforts, even in a unique scenario. [:D]

[Gil R.]

XLegion,
It does make sense for you to scan your drive as soon as you have a chance, which might fix any bad sectors, and you should do so before Eric creates the .exe file, which is a time-consuming prospect. If your harddrive diagnostic tools fix a problem that you weren't aware of this might render the .exe file unnecessary.

[XLegion]

Ok, here is the latest.

Checked my whole system for malware, spyware, virus etc...All clean. Got something called "Error Doctor" that checked my whole system and it was clean. Got another optimizer programe that examined my Windows XP set up and tweaked it a bit.

Result: Everything works ! EXCEPT: Forge of Freedom

Symptom: Game crashes just at the end of the loading procedure.

I tried someones suggestion of renaming the SOUND, MUSIC and VIDEO folders to default the game to start up WITHOUT any of those loading.

End Result: The Same. Crashes near the end of the loading up procedure.

I cannot understand this at all. ALL of my other games work fine INCLUDING all of my Matrix ones.

[Gil R.]

I can't tell from your post if you checked the condition of your harddrive itself. Did you do that too? That's what Eric meant when he mentioned the chance of bad sectors.

[Erik Rutins]

XLegion,

At this point, just wait for the exe from Eric, don't put yourself through anything else until you get that. You've spent a lot of time on this already. We don't know what's causing this either but hopefully that will tell us.

Regards,

- Erik

[XLegion]

Yes, just finished a surface scan of the entire Hard Drive. It took nearly 4 hours but it reported A-OK.

[XLegion]

Some great news!!! I got "Forge of Freedom" to work!!!!

To make a long story short, after doing a 4 hr. defrag on my computer and still not finding anything I returned once again to Adobe Flash Player.

I upgraded it again just in case as Matrix mentioned. BUT, while on the site, I noted they has something called 'SHOCKWAVE' player.

I upgraded that program and now "Forge of Freedom" works. Allelujah!!  That was obviously it.

So please advise everybody to upgrade FLASH AND SHOCKWAVE they are two different programs.


Gilbert Collins

 

[Gil R.]

Excellent news!

I just phoned Eric to head him off at the pass before he spent time on that .exe file. He's glad, too.

Enjoy the patched version of the game, then!

[ericbabe]

Glad to hear it's working.  I'm a little surprised that any Shockwave components might be required, as on our clean install machines we only needed to add the Flash player -- though admittedly we contracted this out to a third-party and so I don't have detailed knowledge of what-all-is-in the intro file.

Another thing I'm still not clear on:  on our machines, when the right Flash components are not installed, the game does not crash but instead just shows an empty white rectangle.  Yet a few people have found that their machines crash.  I'm not sure why there's a difference...maybe it's a Flash-version related problem?

[Longstreet_slith]

Hi Erik,

I sent you a private message, but will ask here as well. My game machine is not connected to the internet, so I need to update my flash with files copied over on a USB stick. I can't see how to do this on the Adobe Flash download site. Do you know how I can update my game machine?

Thanks,
Longstreet