Crashes after 1 turn

[Evander Law]

More info:

I turned off all anti-malware and still CTD. Also, out of curiosity I did not click the End the Orders Phase button (red triangle) this time. Just left it up and running. It still crashed.

Some sort of memory leak maybe?

I'll try running the Memtest86 now.

thx

[zakblood]

no matter what operating system you have and own / run, you need the pre requisites that come with the game in question, no matter what, if your not sure, re install them all

please make sure all game pre requisite are installed with the game, even if you think or fully know there are already installed, it will only over write, and it may be that you have a older or newer version of these where as the game in question may need a certain version.

as all Matrix and slithering games are 32bit, it matter little if you have a 64bit O/S as the games are coded in 32bit, but if the game comes with both 32bit and 64bit pre requisites, and you have a 64bit O/S install them both, not just one set.

most good anti virus engines won't cause problems with games, but some poor ones will, best to install as admin, run as admin, and also add the game exe to the safelist on your AV program just in case.


next,

run as little in the background as you can, as any file can or could conflict with a game running and crash it, it's that simple, why have a printer, scanner and 20 other apps loaded when your playing a game? doesn't make sense and also uses up resources and can or could conflict with the game while running.

a clean profile is a happy gamer...

a clean system not upgraded or more than 6 months old etc, makes for happy gaming, the older it is, the more issue it could have, if you have more than one game crashing, alter some of above or fresh install, as this fixes almost anything apart from hardware and driver conflicts

[8D]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Evander Law

More info:

I turned off all anti-malware and still CTD. Also, out of curiosity I did not click the End the Orders Phase button (red triangle) this time. Just left it up and running. It still crashed.

Some sort of memory leak maybe?

I'll try running the Memtest86 now.

thx

I'm the left-field guy while the experts weigh in, but it seems strange you're getting a Media Player-related crash inside the turn structure. I don't know for sure what MP is used for, but 'd guess at least the opening movie, and maybe the music.

Do you have the in-game music playing? I turned mine off long ago, so I don't recall how. Not sure turning volume to 0 would do it. Maybe you can just cut the whole Sound sub-folder out, paste it on your desktop to hold, and see if the game launches.

[MBF]

A couple of ways to skip the intro but I think there is a switch in on of the readme's somewhere (I am work so can't look it up right now)

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: MBF

A couple of ways to skip the intro but I think there is a switch in on of the readme's somewhere (I am work so can't look it up right now)

There is a switch, but he's getting past the movie and into turns.

In addition to the music I guess MP could be used for combat animations too. You can disable them in the preferences tab, but I don't know if that's enough to stop the EXE from calling MP before deciding it doesn't need it.

[Evander Law]

Thanks again for everyone's input. I think/might have identified a culprit. the soundcard??

First, I ran the Memtest86 test and it came back with no errors. So that's good.

Then I did what Bullwinkle58 suggested and cut the Sound subfolder out and put it on my desktop. When I tried to start the game, it immediately crashed when it tried to start title splash screen and music. The Event manager said it was the same error. wmvcore.dll So does that mean there's a conflict with the sound card? maybe with the internal sound? When I put the Sound subfolder back it crashed about 5 mins into game like it has been doing. I also turned all sound down to 0 (zero) in the preferences, but that didn't make a different. it still crashed.

thx

[Evander Law]

ORIGINAL: zakblood

no matter what operating system you have and own / run, you need the pre requisites that come with the game in question, no matter what, if your not sure, re install them all

please make sure all game pre requisite are installed with the game, even if you think or fully know there are already installed, it will only over write, and it may be that you have a older or newer version of these where as the game in question may need a certain version.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pre requisites"? Are you referring to the game requirements?
And what do you mean by making sure all game pre requisites are installed with the game? What else needs to be installed with the game download from Matrix?

thx

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Evander Law

Thanks again for everyone's input. I think/might have identified a culprit. the soundcard??

First, I ran the Memtest86 test and it came back with no errors. So that's good.

Then I did what Bullwinkle58 suggested and cut the Sound subfolder out and put it on my desktop. When I tried to start the game, it immediately crashed when it tried to start title splash screen and music. The Event manager said it was the same error. wmvcore.dll So does that mean there's a conflict with the sound card? maybe with the internal sound? When I put the Sound subfolder back it crashed about 5 mins into game like it has been doing. I also turned all sound down to 0 (zero) in the preferences, but that didn't make a different. it still crashed.

thx

Well the EXE calls for music as it opens the movie, so a crash is not surprising. But that it plays five minutes with the sound folder and crashes, but has the same error message, seems significant. Korvar has been trying to get it to run under ANY OS, to eliminate a Win 7 issue, but it looks like it's really something with MP or your hardware's relationship with MP.

I think MS changed MP in pretty significant ways in the last two years. Didn't look up-thread to see if you had upgraded. Might be worth re-installing MP.

[Evander Law]

Okay. I think I missed something. What is "MP"???

thx


edit- never mind MP=Mediaplayer

thx

[Evander Law]

Okay guys, looks like I fixed it "unintentionally". I upgraded my RAM from 12GB to 16GB this afternoon and I was able to run the game for about 15 mins and 5 turns without it crashing. I'll test it more later as family duties now call.

Not sure how/why adding more RAM fixed it but I'm glad it did hopefully. I ordered 4 more GBs over the weekend just to max out my computer and it was delivered today. so now instead of 4x2x4x2 its 4x4x4x4. Maybe one of the 2GB sticks were bad even though they tested ok?? I'll try to play longer tomorrow and report back. If that did fix it, I wonder how RAM caused a WMVCORE.DLL error? weird.

thanks again for everyone's help.



edit - spoke too soon. crashed again. [&:]

[Evander Law]

Spoke too soon. Crashed again.[&:]

[Bullwinkle58]

Couple of things occur to me.

Can you launch Media Player outside the game, and play music through it? Can you show a video on it?

Do you have a stand-alone sound card? Or motherboard sound chip(s)? The last dedicated sound card I had was mumble mumble PCs ago; a Turtle Beach. It had its own driver suite. I know MS upgraded MP big time recently, or in the last two years at least. Check your sound drivers.

If you have mobo sound chips go to the mobo site and see if they have a BIOS flash or other flash upgrade for the mobo chipset.

The other thing also concerns hardware. If you have a card it could be loose in the slot. It could be dirty and overheating. The fact it lasted five turns instead of two after you opened the box and mucked with the motherboard for RAM install is suspicious. If you have a card reseat it, or try another slot if you have one free.

But the first thing is more important. If Media Player works great outside the game you've isolated the MP problem a lot.

[Korvar]

ORIGINAL: Evander Law

Maybe one of the 2GB sticks were bad even though they tested ok?? I'll try to play longer tomorrow and report back. If that did fix it, I wonder how RAM caused a WMVCORE.DLL error? weird.

RAM (or the memory controller that controls the RAM) could cause a fault in a module like wmvcore.dll by corrupting the image of the module when it is copied from the hard drive. It's as if you are using a mirror to 'capture' an image of something - if the mirror is scratched, the flaw will be incorporated into the image.

It helps to understand the rough flow of data in a computer:

[CPU] <---data---> [RAM] <---data---> [HARD DRIVE / SOLID STATE DRIVE, as applicable]

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the 'brain' of the computer that processes the instructions contained in executable files. Those instructions, along with all the resources necessary to succesfully execute them, are fed to the CPU by the RAM (Random Access Memory). The RAM is itself fed data by the hard drive or solid state drive.

The reason RAM exists is to act as a buffer between the CPU and hard drive. Without making the explanation too complicated, the CPU is much faster than the hard drive, but its weakness is that it cannot 'remember' anything once the power is turned off. The hard drive sacrifices speed in exchange for the ability to remember information even when the power is turned off. RAM, in essence, is like a hard drive except it is operating much closer to the speed of the CPU; however, it shares the CPU's weakness in that the RAM forgets everything once the power is turned off.

Data flows back and forth as it is written and read again and again.

The above description isn't exact, but you get the idea.


The error message WitPAE is generating indicates that the wmvcore.dll module is not being successfully fed to the CPU. There are many potential causes: wmvcore.dll is bad (corrupted), wmvcore.dll is missing, wmvcore.dll is good but is copied incorrectly into memory (i.e. bad RAM sectors), or wmvcore.dll is good and is being copied correctly, but the file permissions are set incorrectly.



Although it is possible that you have bad sectors in your hard drive or RAM, it is not very likely at this point because the system file integrity check (hard drive) and the Memtest (RAM) came back clean.


One of the benefits of the Labor Day weekend is that I had access to a computer that runs Windows 7 (mine run 10). My family was kind enough to let me poke around their Windows system files a bit.

Here's the properties information for wmvcore.dll on that system, which runs 32-bit Win 7 SP1.






Notice that the version is the same, but your copy is larger in size.




It appears that WitPAE actually calls the following modules:
advapi32.dll
gdi32.dll
kernel32.dll
msvcrt.dll
ole32.dll
oleaut32.dll
user32.dll
WMASF.dll
WMVCORE.dll



NEXT STEPS:

1) Check that you have all of the above modules in your C:\Windows\System32\ and C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folders. If any of these are missing, they could be causing wmvcore.dll to fail loading properly.
2) If that doesn't work, see the attached WMVCORE.dll file. Make a backup copy of yours, and then extract & copy the attached into your SysWOW64 folder. Overwrite the one that is there.
3) You can also try to put a copy into the WitPAE folder (if the copying into SysWOW64 doesn't work). I'm not sure that the WitPAE executable will actually look for it there, but many programs are written to look both in their local directory as well as the System32/SysWOW64 folders, as applicable.
4) If these do not work, I suggest restoring your original wmvcore.dll file, then white listing it in Avast.
5) Finally, try uninstalling Avast temporarily. I've seen some anti-virus software deny access to certain files no matter if the AV is disabled or the files whitelisted.


Let's see how we do with these, then we can proceed from there.


Edit: updated attachment to a Win 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 wmvcore.dll from the SysWOW64 folder. File ver 12.0.7601.17514

[Evander Law]

First off, let me say "wow" and thank you for all your time trying to help a complete stranger.

I'm at work currently but will try everything when I get home this evening. thx!

[Korvar]

No problem [:)]

I logged on to say that I did some analysis on my copy of WitPAE last night and found that it is calling ALL its modules (.dll files) from the SysWOW64 folder (basically the 64-bit equivalent of System32), not the System32 like we'd expect from a 32-bit app. Now, this is using a Win 10 machine... so it's not 100% apples-to-apples, but it's looking like we're not able to ignore the SysWOW64 folder like I previously assumed.

Only bad part is that the Win 7 machine I had access to was 32-bit only, so I wasn't able to get a hold of the 64-bit .dll's. There's a lot of "sources" for .dlls online, but DO NOT trust them.

I think I'm going to set up a virtual Win 7 machine tonight and install WitPAE on it so I have a basis of comparison. We might be able to find anomalies in your file structure, and I can feed you any needed clean files that way.

The other option that would help is to create a process dump of the crash. I did a non-crash test of this process, and it generated about a 260MB file, so we'd have to find a way for you to upload that works for you(Dropbox, etc.). I'm hoping we can nail this bug by stomping around in the dark a little, but if that doesn't work the dump would contain the smoking gun.

[Evander Law]

Okay, trying now all the steps you recommended.

In comparing my wmvcore.dll properties I noticed yours "opens with" C:\ Windows command prompt and mine opens with "unknown application." Could that be something? See attached. thx

[Korvar]

The "Opens With" property is just a preference that you can set - you might prefer one program and I another. You actually have the 'default' setting for .dll files (unknown application) - I'm not sure why the copy I sent has the command prompt set.

If you happen to change it, you can set it back to default by downloading and opening the appropriate registry file located here:

Restore Windows 7 Default File Associations


Restore Windows 10 Default File Associations

Edit: I added a link for Windows 10 for anyone who wants to accomplish this on Win 10.

[Evander Law]

NEXT STEPS:

1) Check that you have all of the above modules in your C:\Windows\System32\ and C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folders. If any of these are missing, they could be causing wmvcore.dll to fail loading properly.
2) If that doesn't work, see the attached WMVCORE.dll file. Make a backup copy of yours, and then extract & copy the attached into your SysWOW64 folder. Overwrite the one that is there.
3) You can also try to put a copy into the WitPAE folder (if the copying into SysWOW64 doesn't work). I'm not sure that the WitPAE executable will actually look for it there, but many programs are written to look both in their local directory as well as the System32/SysWOW64 folders, as applicable.
4) If these do not work, I suggest restoring your original wmvcore.dll file, then white listing it in Avast.
5) Finally, try uninstalling Avast temporarily. I've seen some anti-virus software deny access to certain files no matter if the AV is disabled or the files whitelisted.


shouldn't I put the attached WMVCORE.dll file in the System32 folder since that's where the error location is showing in the Event Viewer?

[Korvar]

That's a valid point, except that I posted the version of wmvcore.dll that goes into SysWOW64.

On this and the next post I'm going to attach complete wmvcore.dll file sets for System32 and SysWOW64. That way you can do both.

[Korvar]

Here's the SysWOW64 set. Both of these sets were taken from a Win 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 install.