ARC no longer compatible with Windows XP

themightyzenith · May 2015

When I tried to launch ARC today I was greeted by the dreadful:

"The procedure entry point InterlockedCompareExchange64 could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll"

Basically this means that ARC, by purpose or by mistake, has been made incompatible with windows versions below Vista. A million little mistakes could explain this, or mabe they decided to discontinue support for XP, who knows?

Meanwhile, Windows XP is still listed in the system requirements for the ARC launcher and for all PW games...

nextnametaken · May 2015

Windows XP was released August 24, 2001.
There are children born at that time who are now capable of having children of their own.
Time to get a new OS.

For your own protection

In the time between April and Windows 9’s eventual release, XP users are going to get swamped with all manner of fun zero-day attacks by malware developers who have had XP’s impending death on their radars for years.

jennymachx · May 2015

Well, Windows Update support stopped for WinXP last year, hence security updates for it has ceased as well. If you're still using WinXP and still go online on it then you're putting yourself at some considerable risk.

It seems like Cryptic wants to focus game updates on relevant OS platforms and doing it instead on an obsolete OS such as WinXP means more probable incompatibility problems running newer versions of the game on it. I'm wondering though if Cryptic gave advance notice that they're going to stop WinXP compatibility with ARC...if it's something out of the blue then that's a crappy move on their part.

Win 7 and 8 are pretty stable and a step up from XP anyway. Better switch to those.

themightyzenith · May 2015

jennymachx wrote: »

Well, Windows Update support stopped for WinXP last year, hence security updates for it has ceased as well. If you're still using WinXP and still go online on it then you're putting yourself at some considerable risk.

It seems like Cryptic wants to focus game updates on relevant OS platforms and doing it instead on an obsolete OS such as WinXP means more probable incompatibility problems running newer versions of the game on it. I'm wondering though if Cryptic gave advance notice that they're going to stop WinXP compatibility with ARC...if it's something out of the blue then that's a crappy move on their part.

Win 7 and 8 are pretty stable and a step up from XP anyway. Better switch to those.

The part of your quote that I have highlighted in red is what I think is terrible about this move.

Neither Cryptic nor Perfect World gave advance notice of this. I suppose it could just have been a mistake on their behalf, but they haven't even commented on it or addressed it.

jonsills · May 2015

Perhaps they felt warning WinXP users of this would be about as relevant as announcing that they don't provide support for WinME or MS-DOS. Even my creaky old laptop that no longer recognizes its own modem was running Win 7.

themightyzenith · May 2015

jonsills wrote: »

Perhaps they felt warning WinXP users of this would be about as relevant as announcing that they don't provide support for WinME or MS-DOS. Even my creaky old laptop that no longer recognizes its own modem was running Win 7.

If the ARC launcher was compatible with Windows XP one day , and they changed that the next day, coupled with...

themightyzenith wrote: »

... Windows XP is still listed in the system requirements for the ARC launcher and for all PW games...

...then it seems to me that it should be a relevant thing to announce.

tfavsb10 · May 2015

Update your moldie oldie computer... We all have to swap to windows 8 at somepoint.

tfavsb10 · May 2015

gradii wrote: »

maybe but 14 year olds with kids would still be weird due to societal norms.

My brothers 15, and last year he and his girlfriend had like 3 pregnacy scare, trust me alot of 14 year olds are more sexually active then you give them credit.

drmechano · May 2015

Just do like I did, use the launcher shortcut to get around using ARC. As for those people saying "oh just upgrade your machines" yes because we're clearly made of money and have enough to throw around in upgraded our creaky old machines as you call them.

Some of us are in the 'mend and make do' part of our lives and saving for things a bit more important than computer upgrades so perhaps stop throwing around your act of superiority and think before you speak?

OR they could have just left ARC to support WinXP...

jennymachx · May 2015

drmechano wrote: »

Just do like I did, use the launcher shortcut to get around using ARC. As for those people saying "oh just upgrade your machines" yes because we're clearly made of money and have enough to throw around in upgraded our creaky old machines as you call them.

Some of us are in the 'mend and make do' part of our lives and saving for things a bit more important than computer upgrades so perhaps stop throwing around your act of superiority and think before you speak?

OR they could have just left ARC to support WinXP...

Nobody's acting "superior". Projecting / Insecure much?

No more Windows Update support = No more security updates = No more vulnerability fixes = Insecure as heck Operating System. You put yourself at risk every time you choose to go online using Windows XP. That is a fact.

Every electronic product has something called an EOL (End-of-life) during which official manufacturer support stops. Windows XP has reached its EOL. People suggesting that it's high time to upgrade to a newer OS are not wrong to do so and it's even with good intentions. Yeah, I get that there are people out there financially struggling to not afford a PC upgrade, but that hardly justifies them responding in the manner that you did.

drmechano · May 2015

I apologise but it just annoys me when people are like "lol just buy a new machine!", the attitude aggrevates me somewhat since it assumes anyone playing on PC is made of money.

I will be upgrading but it will require new graphics card as well (my two current SLI'd ones are five years old, they were top of the line back then but are now woefully underpowered) which means I got to blow at least £130 on a decent middle of the range graphics card and then another £60+ on Windows 7 (because Windows 8 is just horrible, I'm sure we can at least agree on that). That's £190 that I really can't afford to spend right now.

Hell I don't even know IF the graphics card of choice is compatible with my current motherboard (I actually have more RAM (8GB) than Windows XP can use (it only uses a maximum of 4GB) and a decent CPU speed (3.2ghz) so it's just the Graphics card and OS that need updating...and the monitor (I had a LCD display but it died on me and so I have to use an old CRT monitor I had lying around).

Still I get that WinXP is nolonger supported by Microsoft but...there was literally no harm in letting WinXP users be able to use ARC, they get nothing out of basically turning off the functionality that was already there.

jennymachx · May 2015

No one was even saying to buy a complete new PC, just to upgrade it. Upgrading isn't necessarily in the form of hardware. Switching to a newer OS is also considered a form of upgrade. You can have a PC that's 5 years old or even older and it would still run Windows 7 just fine. You're just overreacting.

Windows XP is 13 years old by now. Technical support for games running on it is going to end sooner or later. My bet is on sooner. If I advise anyone to ditch an obsolete and irrelevant-becoming piece of software and to keep up with the times it has nothing to do with assuming that people are "made of money". What's more, you can get a new copy of Windows 7 32-bit Professional at a relatively cheap price now at under $100, Home version should be even cheaper. That's like more than half than what it was used to be priced at.

At the very least the game can still run without using Arc to launch it.

drmechano · May 2015

Surely though by upgrading OS i'd have to get drivers for my current graphics card which I doubt is supported by Windows 7, hell they're not even supported by the manafacturer anymore which is where the whole thing of require both a new OS and a new Graphics card comes in.

If I'm wrong then I apologise.

jonsills · May 2015

tfavsb10 wrote: »

Update your moldie oldie computer... We all have to swap to windows 8 at somepoint.

No we don't. Microsoft has already announced that when Win 10 is released, there will be a period during which it'll be free to upgrade from either Win 8 or Win 7, so I can bypass the bugs in Win 8.1 altogether.

sistersilicon · May 2015

drmechano wrote: »

Still I get that WinXP is nolonger supported by Microsoft but...there was literally no harm in letting WinXP users be able to use ARC, they get nothing out of basically turning off the functionality that was already there.

Jenny just explained why there absolutely is harm in keeping a Windows XP device connected to the internet. InterlockCompareExchange64 is a low-level thread synchronization function introduced in Windows Vista. It could be from ARC code written by PWE, or it could be from a newer version of WebKit, the open source browser rendering engine embedded in ARC. Either way, security cannot and must not regress, and if that means dropping Windows XP support (a whole year after Microsoft did, BTW) to protect your PWE credentials and your Zen purchases, then so be it.

jennymachx wrote: »

What's more, you can get a new copy of Windows 7 32-bit Professional at a relatively cheap price now at under $100, Home version should be even cheaper. That's like more than half than what it was used to be priced at.

Two bits of advice for upgrading:

1: Windows 10 will be the last "major" release of Windows. They're following the model Apple started with OS X Mavericks: Get it free with new hardware or purchase it once, and get upgrades for as long as your hardware is supported. Microsoft is also offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade from Windows 7 and 8.x for the first year after 10 is released. (Note that it does not include XP or Vista!) So if I were looking to upgrade, I'd get the cheapest Windows 7 version I could get my hands on today, upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as possible, and ride that free upgrade train to the end.

2: Go 64-bit at your earliest convenience, because game engines are already moving in that direction. EA's Frostbite engine is 64-bit-only as of version 3. (Check out the sysreqs for Battlefield 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition.) And in a recent MassivelyOP article on City of Titans, Nate Downes popped in on the comments and noted that MWM is targeting 64-bit and 8GB of memory.* Unfortunately, you have to wipe and install fresh for any 32-to-64-bit upgrade, regardless of version. (BTW, 64-bit XP is a non-starter. The Microsoft 3-Version Rule is in effect, and Windows 7 64-bit is version 3.)

*: That was based on him going to his local Best Buy last year and asking a clerk for their best-selling US$500 laptop. It had 64-bit Windows and 8GB of memory. The question came up in the context of their character engine, which is designed to reduce GPU draw calls per character from six or seven to just one, but at the expense of system memory.

riverocean · May 2015

NVM other people answered.. with good info.

tasittler · May 2015

Everybody calm your knickers. It was an error on PWE's part as acknowledged in their other game forums. They are currently working on a fix for ARC. Unfortunately that fix doesn't include throwing it in the rubbish bin.

For reference from a PWE CM:
http://fw-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5254891&postcount=38
Thread start - http://fw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=539731

Apologies for posting links to another game forum, but I doubt every CO player is familiar with PWE's game roster.

themightyzenith · May 2015

tasittler wrote: »

Apologies for posting links to another game forum, but I doubt every CO player is familiar with PWE's game roster.

No worries mate. How else are us CO forumites gonna get relevant and important information?

nepht · May 2015

There will always a work around. I myself use Mint Linux with WINE.

Saying how popular windows XP is I am pretty sure someone will be already working on a variant of WINE to get newer stuff to work on Windows XP.

jennymachx · May 2015

drmechano wrote: »

Surely though by upgrading OS i'd have to get drivers for my current graphics card which I doubt is supported by Windows 7, hell they're not even supported by the manafacturer anymore which is where the whole thing of require both a new OS and a new Graphics card comes in.

If I'm wrong then I apologise.

Assuming that the current PC build you have is from around the time Win 7 was released (2009) or slightly older to approx. 2 years earlier, chances are the manufacturer for your mainboard and graphics card might have gotten driver updates for Win 7. You could always check this at the respective manufacturer website driver / support sections. Windows Update for newer OS'es is also helpful with sourcing for drivers for plenty of hardware brands / models.

ARC no longer compatible with Windows XP

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