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Newbie Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Canada

I have been a happy and contented v3.3a user for some time now. After recieving the August update, I entered the ACExplorer pgm to update the dat files. The next time I tried to enter ACExplorer, it would not run. Period. My machine locks up and I have to hard reboot to escape. This occurs every time now whether AC is up or not. I have tried re-installing over top of the existing files but that does not help. I am hesitant to uninstall and start from scratch as I fear having to re-register and pay for software already purchased. Has this anything to do with the August Update to Asheron's Call?? Anyone else out there had this happen?? What did you do? I am running Win 98 thru an ADSL conection. Any suggestions most appreciated.

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2003 6:07 pm

It shouldn't have anything to do with the August update. It's possible one of your data files got corrupted. You can safely delete everything in your AC Explorer directory and then just reinstall. Then do another Update All of the data files. You won't have to re-register or pay anything...I never charge anything after the initial purchase.

Newbie Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Canada

OK, well I did a complete uninstall and reinstall from my stored set-up routine. Same problem...locks up machine after trying to initialize. So I zapped everything again and went to your website and downloaded the 3.33a setup and tried that...same result. I am stymied and mystified...it was working fine before! The only change to my system that I can think of is the recent security patch bundle to IE Explorer 6.0 (running under Win98) which I installed about a week ago. And , of course, the August update to Asheron's Call. ACExplorer started up without apparent problem subsequently but I started running into problems when I used the in-program updates: the 'dat' update seemed to take, but the map and terrain updates warned me that I couldn't run them while AC was up and running (but it tried anyways - unsuccesfully). After closing ACExplorer, it would not run again and the rest of the story you have heard already. No approach to reinstallation has worked for me. Hoping there is something I have yet to try...

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2003 4:58 am

If you deleted everything before reinstalling then I'm not sure what else to suggest. Updating the IE security shouldn't have had any effect at all, and nobody else is reporting problems like this either. All I can say is to make sure you *really* deleted everything and that you are not accidentally running AC Explorer from some different directory (right-click on the icon, select Properties and look at what directory it is pointing to).

Installing the 3.33a release into a blank directory should give you the default setup without any new data updates and that has got to work unless there is seriously something wrong with something else on your system like a video driver or something. AC Explorer doesn't store anything on your system outside of it's own directory (except for the eLicense system, which shouldn't have anything to do with this).

When it locks up during initializing, does it say what it is initializing? Is it loading the database, or the graphics, or what? It should say on the Initializing splash screen.

Newbie Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Canada

I have uninstalled and reinstalled several times now...always using the default directory. The program files reside in this directory only...I searched for other copies of pgm files and established there are none. I am using the same video drivers, etc., as always...there have been no hardware/software changes of any kind other than described in my earlier posts. In each instance, the installation goes smoothly and when initiating the pgm, I get the splash screen with progress bars telling me about the loading of the graphical map, places, dungeons, maps, etc. This also appears normal. Once all this is completed the splash screen comes down and that's when the computer does the hard lock-down. Everything freezes...I cannot bring up the Task Mgr, or Alt-Tab...nothing. Only a hard reboot gets me out of the freeze-up. I have DirectX v9.0b installed but that was well before this problem arose. I use Norton Anti-virus and Zone-alarm Pro, for security, and these have coexisted happily previously...but just in case I disabled both before installing and running AC Explorer.
The default shrug-off, I'm sure, is that "something" has happened to my Win98 operating system that is interfering with your pgm. Bill Gates, you gotta love him!! Well, I guess I'm hooped. I don't intend to reinstall Windows just for this (in all other respects it has been, and remains, relatively stable). It is extremely frustrating as I used your program extensively, relied on it in fact, and I am going to feel lost in Dereth without it! Anyone with any suggestions would have my undying gratitude...

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2003 7:48 pm

Take a look at your system resources. Go to the Start/Programs/Accessories/SystemTools/ResourceMonitor and run that when you run AC Explorer. The point at which it is hanging is when it is attempting to display the map window. At that point everything else has been loaded into memory. Win95/98/ME are all limited to 128 K bytes of resources, no matter how much RAM you have. It's possible that something else has gotten installed or is running in the background that is taking up resources. Loading the large background image for AC Explorer takes quite a bit of resources also.

Might be time to think about a WinXP upgrade. While I hardly ever suggest this, because WinXP has it's own troubles, it gets rid of the system resource limit, and also prevents a single application from hanging the whole computer like this. I've been running AC on WinXP for a while now and it seems fine. But, of course, it will depend upon whether you have older hardware as to whether this is really a good idea or not.

Newbie Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Canada

Dear Mr Zugg: Still here, still frozen out of ACExplorer 3.33a. Not upgrading to WinXP (I am a serious gamer); so, I would like to know if you would recommend trying either the beta of ZExplorer, or the older version of ACExplorer (I am not that interested in the tracking features anyway). If I were to try either of those approaches, what do I need to know, or what would you recommend, in my case? Thanks for your patience...

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 6:23 pm

I'd recommend giving zExplorer a try first since it uses the same license as AC Explorer. For Windows 98 you might need to update your Microsoft MDAC database drivers. There are instructions for this on the page http://www.zuggsoft.com/data. And, of course, it's easy to go ahead and try the free version of AC Explorer since it doesn't use any licenses at all.

Just make sure you install each program into it's own directory. Do not install either of these into your existing AC Explorer directory. If they are all in their own directories then you can use any of the three programs without interference from each other.

Since your problems sound like a graphics/memory issue, and the graphics code in all three versions is nearly identical, you'll probably have the same problem with all of them. On the other hand, if the problem is still something bad in your AC Explorer directory, then both of the other options should work.

Did you ever check the system resources when running AC Explorer?

Newbie Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Canada

Sorry, I meant to answer the resources question in my last post. When ACExplorer was working for me, often I would have AC, IE, and ACExplorer all running together (alt-tabbing between them because the decal thing is beyond me). I would drop out of AC to check the tips on Maggie's website for a particular quest or whatever, then bring up ACExplorer mainly to use the route function. All three running simultaneously did get my resources close to the 30% line, which I try to stay above, but generally I had no problems owing to low resources.
Since my troubles began, I have been attempting to run ACExlorer exclusive of everything else; at the point things freeze my resources show well over 60%

Newbie Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Canada

Oh, btw, I have resized my screen to run in 1280x1024 (32 bit color depth), and can't remember exactly how long ago that change took effect...are there any graphics setting restrictions that I should be aware of (I have an older STB Velocity 4400 16meg video card) that might have contributed to my problems now running ACExplorer?

Newbie Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Canada

AHA!!! It was graphic related! As soon as I dropped back to 16 bit color depth everything was back to normal (like nothing ever happened). I don't know why I was at 32 bit in the first place (I can't tell the difference), and 16 bit is a lot easier on my machine of course. Well, as they say: WooT! I can be a happy camper again (oops...bad choice of metaphors). I kept trying to think of things that had changed on this machine and the change in screen graphics didn't occur to me until just now. OK everyone out there...a 11 post case study for you (assuming Zugg closes the loop on this thread). Probably most applicable to folks running those steam driven machines like mine.

Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2003 6:16 pm

Ahh, I should have had you try that earlier. Actually, the sure-fire way to determine if it's a graphics driver problem is to right-click on My Computer, go to Properties, then Performance and drag the Video Performance bar all the way to the left. That turns off the video card accelleration, which essentially turns off all the fancy code in the graphics driver that might be crashing. If this removes the error, then the bug is in the video driver, which is very common.

Try going to the web site for your graphics card to get a better driver, or true the www.guru3d.com web site which has drivers for almost all graphics cards along with user ratings to determine which driver is best for which version of Windows. That's the site I finally got a working NVidia driver for my WinXP system many months ago.