There is an error with your serial number as entered

[alhscw]

I can't run Distant Worlds and get this error when trying to start the game:

There is an error with your serial number as entered. Please contact support@matrixgames.com for assistance. Error Code: -1073741819

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling but that didn't work. I also tried disabling my firewall; set DistantWorlds.exe to run as admin - nothing has worked.

I copied and pasted the serial number from the email so there shouldn't have been any typos. I visually confirmed that they were the same during the second install.

Any suggestions?

[hadberz]

Make sure there are no spaces before or after the serial number. Sometimes a space is at the end when copying and pasting.

[alhscw]

No spaces. There's also a serialreg.txt in the program directory and the serial # looks fine there.

[Erik Rutins]

That's not a normal error code, it's basically a garbage code. Did you install with your anti-virus/security software off and is it still off at this time? Could you post a DxDiag file please? Were there any other errors during installation?

[alhscw]

The anti-virus/security software (ESET Smart Security) was on during the install but I have subsequently turned it off along with the firewall. There were no errors during the install and I've attached the DxDiag file. Do you think I should try reinstalling with security off? This hasn't been a problem with anything I've installed in the past.

Thanks for the help!

[alhscw]

Okay, I got it to work. I set both DistantWorlds.exe and DistWorldrez.exe to run as Administrator and in Windows XP compatibility mode. I'm not sure I needed all that and will start removing some of the settings to see the minimum to make the game run. I'll post my findings.

[alhscw]

It turns out that the only change I had to make was to set DistantWorlds.exe to run in Windows XP (Service Pack 3) compatibility mode. I turned off the "Run as Admin" and clearewd everything from DistWorldrez.exe - it just looked unusual enough that I thought it might be involved in the registration check. I tried using Vista (Service Pack 2) compatibility but got the same serial number error. I wonder if this is related to my running the 64 bit version of Win7...

[Erik Rutins]

Thanks for the follow up - sorry I was absent for a bit, had to eat some dinner.

We've installed it on Windows 7 64-bit without needing to set any compatibility mode settings, but I'm glad that worked for you. However, if ESET was running during install, it's possible it prevented it from installing into the 64-bit part of the registry which could have caused it to need to look in the 32-bit area for settings. Not sure why your system would need this whereas our test system did not.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

Your DxDiag looks fine (nice system, by the way). I would have to guess that ESET somehow prevented the normal settings being written which ended up requiring it to run in compatibility mode. If you want to, you can try uninstalling and reinstalling with ESET off to see if that makes any difference.

[Terl]

ORIGINAL: alhscw

It turns out that the only change I had to make was to set DistantWorlds.exe to run in Windows XP (Service Pack 3) compatibility mode. I turned off the "Run as Admin" and clearewd everything from DistWorldrez.exe - it just looked unusual enough that I thought it might be involved in the registration check. I tried using Vista (Service Pack 2) compatibility but got the same serial number error. I wonder if this is related to my running the 64 bit version of Win7...

I run Win 7 64 bit and have had it running all through beta without any compatibility settings at all. Did you install it to the default C:\Matrix Games? I find they all work great there.

[alhscw]

Thanks Erik. I tried reinstalling with ESET turned off and still had the error. No big deal since I have the game working now. Terl - I left everything as default for the install - including the directory. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Erik Rutins]

Ok, thanks for trying that, alhscw. Now I'm quite puzzled though. We'll see if we can figure out a way to duplicate this, but this is the first such report I've seen of any compatibility settings required for Windows 7 64-bit.