Tech Issue

duckysolo2

3 weeks ago, I uninstalled STO. At the time, it worked perfectly. This morning, I reinstalled and patched 3 separate times and after I click "Engage" ... it goes to the black screen that says "Cryptic" and has the loading thing ... then after a few seconds, the screen goes black and there's a white box with nothing in it at the top left corner of the screen. It just sits there and doesn't load nor does it give me an error. The only option is to pull up the Task Manager to force close it and once I've done that, it gives me graphical errors all over my desktop which I can only get rid of by restarting my computer. I have changed nothing on my computer since the original installation (which I may remind you worked perfectly) ... but suddenly, it doesn't work. All of my drivers are updated. I downloaded it from the link on the STO site, not through Steam or anything. Have the specs of this game changed or something between patches or what?

joelley

On the startup screen, click options.

Select "force verify" and then login. The game then repairs itself (mostly)

I have also selected disable on demand patching. This means a large extra download, but it seems to make the game more stable.

I have Win 7 64 bit, so I run the game in WinXP compatibilty mode. I only really have the patch timeout and DC problems that everyone is posting about at the moment.

Hope this helps.

duckysolo2

I will attempt to do as you suggested and report back here with the results.

duckysolo2

"Force Verify" had no impact. Same issue.

idrona

duckysolo2 wrote: »

3 weeks ago, I uninstalled STO. At the time, it worked perfectly. This morning, I reinstalled and patched 3 separate times and after I click "Engage" ... it goes to the black screen that says "Cryptic" and has the loading thing ... then after a few seconds, the screen goes black and there's a white box with nothing in it at the top left corner of the screen. It just sits there and doesn't load nor does it give me an error. The only option is to pull up the Task Manager to force close it and once I've done that, it gives me graphical errors all over my desktop which I can only get rid of by restarting my computer. I have changed nothing on my computer since the original installation (which I may remind you worked perfectly) ... but suddenly, it doesn't work. All of my drivers are updated. I downloaded it from the link on the STO site, not through Steam or anything. Have the specs of this game changed or something between patches or what?

I'd try launch the game in Safe Mode too, and see if I could get as far as to be able to lower the graphics.

Also check your windows updates, for stuff like the latest .net update.

Another thing that helped me sometimes when I have had an "old" installation of windows is to run a registry cleaner program (google it and you'll probably find a bunch of freeware).

joelley wrote: »

I have Win 7 64 bit, so I run the game in WinXP compatibilty mode.

You shouldn't have to run it in XP mode? Mine works perfect (in-game bugs aside).

duckysolo2

I may put this off until after my tax return comes. I'm planning to buy one of those portable hard drives so that I may move my videos and pictures over and just wipe the computer and start over.

For the game, the default settings were already at low (I have a crappy HP Slimline), but it worked well enough with low settings so that there were no framerate issues or anything. This time though, I can't even get into the game; one would assume that the default settings would still be low like they were the first time the game was installed.

You may be on to something with the registry cleaning though as I've installed a few extra-curricular programs, running UTorrent, Dosbox, and a few other things and I believe it may have messed with the registry.

I will try in "Safe Mode" and report back the results. Thanks for your replies ... it is sad that I'm getting more feedback from fellow players than from the company running the game. I guess since it's Free 2 Play, they've got more work than they can handle ... or was customer service always this poor?

If you're having an issue installing and playing the game from the get-go, but you're required to have an active account for a certain amount of time before you can even create a thread on these forums asking for Tech advice, you're going to lose out on a lot of customers.

merryprankster2

Forget about it. The game is as buggy as a Pakistani flophouse. Craptic cant figure out what's going on on their own servers, let alone your machine.

duckysolo2

Safe Mode gave a little headway but it did not last for long. Apparently, through the latest download, the settings are not at default what they were the first time I had installed. After squinting hard to try to make the buttons out beyond the graphical errors, I found the button I needed to change to make everything crystal clear (for some reason the 60hz was not the default) ... it stayed crystal-clear for about 5 seconds, then the game minimized and when I drew it back up, the graphical errors returned and I was forced to restart my computer. I had launched it a second time, and now it's stopping me on the log-in saying that I need to provide a "1 time code" that has been emailed to me ... well, over the course of 2 hours, I continually checked my email and there was no code ... so even if I wouldn't continue to face technical issues, I would probably have an account issue at this point.

I appreciate all your help, fellow posters, though I think I'm ready to call this quits until I wipe my computer and when I return I will probably just start a new account since apparently something's wrong with this one now. It was only 24 levels, it shouldn't take too long to redo.