No Longer Runs on XP

ruinthefun · October 2016

Error on Startup: GameClient.exe - Entry Point Not Found

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

Google for this particularly error message indicates that apparently this means XP compatibility has been broken.

lucho80 · October 2016

My friend, you have worse problems than the game not running if you're still on XP. Spend $14 to $18 for a Windows 7 key. If your computer runs XP, it should handle Windows 7 fine.

By the way:
GetFileInformationByHandleEx is only available in KERNEL32.dll in Windows Vista or newer. If you're on XP, you're out of luck.

richard1279 · October 2016

If this was purposely done, it would be nice if we were given a warning.
And if it was not purposely done, I hope they fix it soon.
As for you lucho80, there was no call for being such a condescending person to the OP for his post.

shadowwraith · October 2016

ruinthefun wrote: »

I assure you any "security threats" you associate with XP are nothing more than overblown Microsoft propaganda and there is nothing that cannot be resolved with good network and file management policies, like "Never running other programs or allowing the computer to contact the Internet on anything but approved channels", same as every other Microsoft machine. I don't connect ANY Microsoft machine directly to the Internet.

Microsoft officially declared XP dead in april 2014, i have strong doubts that any mainstream AAA developer supports XP anymore, all microsoft products require an internet connection for updates.

Buy a new computer with an upto date operating system, antivirus and firewall before you even think of going online.

richard1279 · October 2016

ruinthefun wrote: »

I assure you any "security threats" you associate with XP are nothing more than overblown Microsoft propaganda and there is nothing that cannot be resolved with good network and file management policies, like "Never running other programs or allowing the computer to contact the Internet on anything but approved channels", same as every other Microsoft machine. I don't connect ANY Microsoft machine directly to the Internet.

Thank you! I have managed to keep my system malware/hacker free, and uncompromised both before 2014 and after (when xp support stopped). And I have seen friends' pc's with win vista - 8.1 get "hack'd"/compromised (and I've repaired what I could, and advised them on securing their systems).
And it's not like I'm hiding online! I play other games, and am active on tech/game forums, making myself quite a few "tech savvy" enemies that would love to get access to, and ruin, my system/life. It has yet to happen.

If you want to talk about security lets talk about, for example, Microsoft's spying, sorry; "data gathering", methods; their windows10 EULA basically telling you they have all rights to access, and store, YOUR personal information, contacts, friends' contacts and personal info, even copies of your pictures/videos. Oh, and it can't be disabled, even when you choose the options to disable it! Heck, when MS took over skype, they changed the program to where they store a copy of messages typed/sent, files transferred, even video chats (better not have any intimate conversations with your s/o).
And while we're at it, how about Intel motherboards with TPM and AMT? You can't tell me a decent hacker cannot use those to find their way into modern systems. And don't expect all the built-in security features in windows10 to save you.

Yes, I am paranoid when it comes to my security and privacy online. It's partly why I choose to still use XP, and bolster it's weaknesses with 3rd party security software (I would use Linux, except it does not run all the programs I have). If you want a more practical reason for me still using xp: is because aside from 2 other games, and I guess STO now, my system runs everything I need it running properly! Why on earth should I "improve" something that's not broken? Yes I know "xp mode" exists, but it still does not solve the privacy/vulnerability issues.

That being said, if I had the money, AND companies and gov't agencies would respect the constitution, and people's right to privacy, I would not think twice about building a second system. But as things are right now, I cannot justify spending 300+ dollars to build even a low-lvl system JUST so I can play STO, even though I'm a lifetime subscriber to STO.

All this being said, the point of the original post was to clarify to other players what the error message meant, in hopes of either saving them time in doing the research themselves, and/or confusion. It had NOTHING to do with whether using XP is a good or bad idea. But of course it got twisted into that and thus my long post/rant.

I admit to being guilty of feeding the trolls :-\

tymersto · October 2016

Well, it's official: STO no longer supports XP!

Some in another thread poster their reply back from support...

exedusomni wrote: »

Received a response after the ticket, very fast response, thank you for that. Here I am posting for xp owners.
"
Hello,

Unfortunately we are no longer able to offer support for Windows XP systems. While we haven't intentionally upped the minimum requirements to exclude Win XP, some of the recent additions and improvements we've made to the game incorporate technologies that Win XP is incapable of. You can try manually lowering the game settings as much as possible which might allow you to play.

Windows XP is an extremely old operating system, first released in 2001. Microsoft stopped updating the OS in 2009, and officially stopped support for it in 2014. Hardware manufacturers also stopped updating their software for XP around the same time. It's because of this lack of updates that the operating system itself may not be able to handle the updated technology that our games are incorporating.

Regards,
Tek
Senior Game Master
Perfect World Entertainment
"

Well I'm SoL for playing STO for the long term...

Thank you for the time...

angrytarg · October 2016

This comes really at no surprise. Why should Cryptic continue XP support when Microsoft itself stopped doing so? This is not condescening or aggressive, but you don't ask for Win 98 or DOS 6.22 or AMIGA OS support, do you?

Sometimes it's hard to let go of the favourites, but times are changing. I can't go online with my old outdated machines any more and nobody will make sure their games run on them.

bobs1111 · October 2016

Man folks if you really hate newer versions of windows that bad... install Linux. Can be even smaller then XP... and it gets actual support. I'm sorry if your on XP and you haven't ran into issues... its only because your lucky. MS propaganda or not... I'm looking at a list of 100s of possible exploits that will never be patched as its a dead unsupported system at this point. I don't care what your doing with firewalls ect, if you have packets coming in and out your not secure.
STO doesn't always work perfectly in Wine, most of us have it running reasonably.
http://manjaro.org/ if you need a good fast distro.
Unless your system really is XP era hardware... if that's the case yes shell out a few dollars for a Win7 Key, if it runs XP 7 shouldn't be an issue. (on older hardware native windows is still the best option for games)

ljk808 · October 2016

ruinthefun wrote: »

For anyone who wants a solution...All the text is still broken, but that's apparently a wider DX9 issue.

Thanks for the detective work and for sharing. GameClient starts but then crashes halfway through the Cryptic loading screen. Worth another try after tomorrow's patch.

Here's the direct link to KawaiiSara's explanation:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2964408

richard1279 · October 2016

coldnapalm wrote: »

... I bet these people also think a condom with holes is fine as long as you can't see the holes. But hey it's okay, they know better. So at this point...let em "know" better. There is no fixing stupid.

Thanks for the laugh (seriously, I never expected something this absurd coming from a STO player)! With a comparison like that, you clearly speak from personal experience! How hard it must be for you to be such a hypocrite. :-)

richard1279 · October 2016

bobs1111 wrote: »

Man folks if you really hate newer versions of windows that bad... install Linux. Can be even smaller then XP... and it gets actual support. I'm sorry if your on XP and you haven't ran into issues... its only because your lucky. MS propaganda or not... I'm looking at a list of 100s of possible exploits that will never be patched as its a dead unsupported system at this point. I don't care what your doing with firewalls ect, if you have packets coming in and out your not secure.
STO doesn't always work perfectly in Wine, most of us have it running reasonably.
http://manjaro.org/ if you need a good fast distro.
Unless your system really is XP era hardware... if that's the case yes shell out a few dollars for a Win7 Key, if it runs XP 7 shouldn't be an issue. (on older hardware native windows is still the best option for games)

I can't speak for others, but personally, I have games I play, and programs I use, ranging from win95-era to recent. Most of them would not work on a newer windows version. Some of them I even need to use an emulator on, to slow down the cpu speed! Classic games that are outdated, yet still fun to play (which I routinely do), and programs that perform their tasks in ways that I have yet to find in "similar" newer programs.

So I'm expected to dump all of that because STO decides they don't like xp or vista anymore, YET they still use directx9. This just reminds me of posts/rants of pvp never being updated/fixed (and seriously being on the chopping block) all stemming from a head dev's personal pain (possibly embarrassment, not sure) at his newly created "big and bad" ship being torn to shreds the day after it was released.

They're not thinking about what players want. At best, they're thinking about what's easy for them; and at worse, they're thinking "TRIBBLE everyone else: this is how I want things being done". Granted it's their prerogative, as they're the ones put in positions where they are allowed to let personal bias be treated as what's good for everyone.

But for players like myself that are huge fans of Star Trek, lifetime subs, spent hundreds on this game (back when I could afford it), and been playing for years now, the thought of having to choose between STO, and everything else I can do/play on my system, is a horrible choice, which could have been avoided.

As far as switching to Linux: granted I like that Linux is much more stable and secure compared to windows, but if it cannot run all the programs I currently have, then it's far from being a perfect solution. It's only a slightly better solution (than upgrading to windows7 or higher).

richard1279 · October 2016

After that epiphany about STO still supporting directx9 but not xp or vista, I did some digging on other forums. Seems the general consensus is if directx9 is being supported, there is no reason for xp and vista not to be. And idk if this is conspiracy theory or not (I'll let you be the judge), most agree that Microsoft is paying off game companies/devs to make this so. Again, idk if it's just a conspiracy theory, BUT I will say it also could explain why the current owners of STO chose to not support the game in mac environments. One reason that lends support to all this (that can't be ignored) is the fact that ever since STO was bought out, there has been a shift from the attitude of it being a "labour of love" to the company trying to make as much money as possible, with as little effort put into the game as possible.
For example: staff being fired (despite constantly increasing complaints about bugs and messed up updates/patches) - which had a secondary effect of bolstering their "pity us" excuse of "we can either make more content, OR not make any new content and just fix the problems we have, not both", creating a rift amongst players over which is more important to them. Also, game content not being as polished, because of not wanting to spend the resources to quality check their work!

Just some food for thought.

P.S.
I have yet to see a successful MMORPG that does not have a decently strong labour-of-love aspect guiding their decisions in trying to grow their game. I admit I was not around since the beginning of STO, but from what I have read, heard about from other players, and experienced myself, this aspect is nearly non-existent here anymore.

angrytarg · October 2016

I get that you are disappointed. But please don't do what you are doing right now

exedusomni · October 2016

Spent a lot of time to find a solution, there are limited options which are playing with kernel of XP. So it is not worth it for a system that is working fine, no need to break it. Therefore I downloaded a free OS Linux Mint, installed it as a second OS, installed Wine as well. Didn't even download the STO and made any installments, I just opened from the desktop shortcut of windows xp in the folders. It worked, the loading times are a bit longer but it works. And after the game I restart and go back to xp if I want.

But since its a lot of hassle now. I will just log in to update doffs, characters, and thats it. I will not be an active player until there is a patch or I save some money to buy a new PC. I am a lifetime player, I like STO and I will try to play it. I also understand the game needs to be more appealing therefore making some changes are a must for the devs.

So it is one of those times to decide what is worth doing and how long can you keep going.

bobs1111 · October 2016

richard1279 wrote: »

bobs1111 wrote: »

Man folks if you really hate newer versions of windows that bad... install Linux. Can be even smaller then XP... and it gets actual support. I'm sorry if your on XP and you haven't ran into issues... its only because your lucky. MS propaganda or not... I'm looking at a list of 100s of possible exploits that will never be patched as its a dead unsupported system at this point. I don't care what your doing with firewalls ect, if you have packets coming in and out your not secure.
STO doesn't always work perfectly in Wine, most of us have it running reasonably.
http://manjaro.org/ if you need a good fast distro.
Unless your system really is XP era hardware... if that's the case yes shell out a few dollars for a Win7 Key, if it runs XP 7 shouldn't be an issue. (on older hardware native windows is still the best option for games)

I can't speak for others, but personally, I have games I play, and programs I use, ranging from win95-era to recent. Most of them would not work on a newer windows version. Some of them I even need to use an emulator on, to slow down the cpu speed! Classic games that are outdated, yet still fun to play (which I routinely do), and programs that perform their tasks in ways that I have yet to find in "similar" newer programs.

So I'm expected to dump all of that because STO decides they don't like xp or vista anymore, YET they still use directx9. This just reminds me of posts/rants of pvp never being updated/fixed (and seriously being on the chopping block) all stemming from a head dev's personal pain (possibly embarrassment, not sure) at his newly created "big and bad" ship being torn to shreds the day after it was released.

They're not thinking about what players want. At best, they're thinking about what's easy for them; and at worse, they're thinking "**** everyone else: this is how I want things being done". Granted it's their prerogative, as they're the ones put in positions where they are allowed to let personal bias be treated as what's good for everyone.

But for players like myself that are huge fans of Star Trek, lifetime subs, spent hundreds on this game (back when I could afford it), and been playing for years now, the thought of having to choose between STO, and everything else I can do/play on my system, is a horrible choice, which could have been avoided.

As far as switching to Linux: granted I like that Linux is much more stable and secure compared to windows, but if it cannot run all the programs I currently have, then it's far from being a perfect solution. It's only a slightly better solution (than upgrading to windows7 or higher).

I feel your pain when it comes to running old games you love. Seriously though give a good linux distro a spin. Dosbox runs better in Linux... which you seem to be using in XP. Wine will run older windows software far better then Win 10. The only issue could be the speed of your hardware. Wine runs most DX9 games very well. Setup right in regards to STO I would say its aprox 10% slower then running STO in win 7. For lots of people that isn't even something you would really notice... you know your machine better then I do up to you. XP is missing a bunch of stuff at this point, it is hard to expect Cryptic to continue supporting it forever, its not like MS is going to be patching features into XP. This happens to all versions of windows, where for a few years games still work on the older versions until developers start really exploiting the newer versions unique features.

If you have an old harddrive around... throw it in your machine and install Linux on it and see if you can get STO running. Worse case you gain some Linux XP.

bobs1111 · October 2016

ruinthefun wrote: »

Error on Startup: GameClient.exe - Entry Point Not Found

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

Google for this particularly error message indicates that apparently this means XP compatibility has been broken.

richard1279 wrote: »

After that epiphany about STO still supporting directx9 but not xp or vista, I did some digging on other forums. Seems the general consensus is if directx9 is being supported, there is no reason for xp and vista not to be.

api-ms-win-core-file-l1-1-0.dll

That file is the issue right now. Cryptic has started using "GetFileInformationByHandle" which is a pretty standard kernel call at this point. It simply doesn't work on older versions of windows anymore.

For reference check out this page it has a pretty good break down of why lots of software won't run on Windows older then 7.
http://www.nirsoft.net/articles/windows_7_kernel_architecture_changes.html
The person who published this page was coming at it from the other way... making their older software Win 7 compatible, at this point programmers are not starting with old code bases written with 10+ year old kernel calls. Most younger programmers being hired by game companies these days never programmed anything targeted at XP even when they where in school.

richard1279 · October 2016

bobs1111 wrote: »

I feel your pain when it comes to running old games you love. Seriously though give a good linux distro a spin. Dosbox runs better in Linux... which you seem to be using in XP. Wine will run older windows software far better then Win 10. The only issue could be the speed of your hardware. Wine runs most DX9 games very well. Setup right in regards to STO I would say its aprox 10% slower then running STO in win 7. For lots of people that isn't even something you would really notice... you know your machine better then I do up to you. XP is missing a bunch of stuff at this point, it is hard to expect Cryptic to continue supporting it forever, its not like MS is going to be patching features into XP. This happens to all versions of windows, where for a few years games still work on the older versions until developers start really exploiting the newer versions unique features.

If you have an old harddrive around... throw it in your machine and install Linux on it and see if you can get STO running. Worse case you gain some Linux XP.

Good guess with the dosbox, lol. I DO use it on a few games.

So I guess I'm going to have a heck of a crash course in linux, and wine. For now I guess I'll install linux on a secondary HDD and live with the frustration of having to restart and switching OS' every time I want to play sto. At least until I can afford a second build and just use a KVM switch. If my older games work as well as you say, it will be a bonus! But for right now, if I can get ventrilo, discord, slack, and glip to work along with STO, I'll be glad.

As for my machine, it's not too old, but it's old :-\. https://imgur.com/a/5UBP8

Since you suggested manjaro, I guess I'll start there.

pwlaughingtrendy · November 2016

Hey folks!

Technically speaking, Windows XP is not officially supported by Microsoft. That being said, the team will be rolling out some updates that will help support our Captains who are running on Windows XP. Nonetheless, I do recommend to upgrade to a supported operation system (Windows 7 and beyond) in order to ensure a more reliable playing experience.

tpow · November 2016

Well, that is good news. I guess this is what happened. They (Cryptic) must have ran a matrix and saw massive user drop off and subscription cancellations and support tickets for this issue, massive revenue loss, not to mention STO says the game will run on Windows XP. Yes, XP is outdated and End of Life (EOL), but SWTOR, WOW and other games still run on it. A lot of people who play these F2P games don't have extra money to go out and buy new hardware. I myself do not have extra money to buy newer hardware. I am glad to see Cryptic addressing the issue, I am sure mostly out of loss of revenue.

jaturnley · November 2016

Looking at the latest Steam numbers, XP users account for under 5 percent of gamers out there.

You talk about subscription dropoffs, when Cryptic has not published numbers for subs, ever, but the chances that STO subscribers behind different from the general PC gaming numbers on Steam is unlikely, so even if they did have a drop from this is would be from a group that's very small to begin with. Basically, that logic makes no sense.

XP is no longer getting security updates as of February 2016, so Cryptic keeping support going much longer is actually putting their game at risk from OS side viruses and exploits, that will get worse as companies begin to EOL things like anti malware for it. I would not expect them to keep patching up their code for more than a few more months. At some point they will want to move to 64 bit, at which point it's all over.

angrytarg · November 2016

tpow wrote: »

Well, that is good news. I guess this is what happened. They (Cryptic) must have ran a matrix and saw massive user drop off and subscription cancellations and support tickets for this issue, massive revenue loss, not to mention STO says the game will run on Windows XP. Yes, XP is outdated and End of Life (EOL), but SWTOR, WOW and other games still run on it. A lot of people who play these F2P games don't have extra money to go out and buy new hardware. I myself do not have extra money to buy newer hardware. I am glad to see Cryptic addressing the issue, I am sure mostly out of loss of revenue.

"Massive", huh?

No Longer Runs on XP

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