Sam & Max games don't work.

[aulin]

Hi.

When I realized I got the Sam & Max: Season 2 games for the Great Adventure Bundle, I was thrilled! I went out and got the DVD version of season 1, so that I wouldn't see any spoilers by playing Season 2 straight away.

I got home and installed it, tried to run it, and it didn't work. I saw the spinning disc cursor, the DVD began spinning in the player, and then I got an error message saying SamMax101.exe had crashed. I searched around the web for a bit and found out that my disc (JoWooD / The Adventure Company release) wasn't administered by you guys. It was tricky to say the least, to find out that a game by TTS is distributed by TAC and/or JoWooD respectively in different parts of the world.

I found a patch on TAC's site mentioning my problem. (http://www.adventurecompanygames.com...patches/sm.php)
I installed it, but the problem remains.

I got to thinking, that I could try the Season 2 games and see if there was any difference. I did, and the only difference is that I now didn't even get any error message. The program just halts execution for some reason. One second it's in the process list, the next it isn't.

I've already mailed JoWooD about Season 1, and I know you're only responsible for support on Season 2, since I bought that from you. But still it would be nice if both issues could be addressed. Especially if they're related. It could be an issue with my computer, for all I know.

I've included the error message (which is in Swedish, but it's just a standard Windows XP crash report anyway) and a DxDiag.txt report (which had to be zipped in order to meet the file size restrictions, unfortunately) which I hope will help solve this.

[DjNDB]

There are a couple of possible issues
Do you have any special characters (e.g. umlauts and accents) in your windows Username?

Description: SB X-Fi Audio [9000]
Date and Size: 8/7/2005 23:54:36, 439424 bytes

Your sound drivers are really old.
Try installing the latest X-FI drivers.

[aulin]

Originally Posted by DjNDB

There are a couple of possible issues
Do you have any special characters (e.g. umlauts and accents) in your windows Username?



Your sound drivers are really old.
Try installing the latest X-FI drivers.

Thanks DjNDB for the quick reply! My Windows username is just Johan, so no special characters there. I will definitely try to update my sound drivers — I really didn't know they were that old! :O Let's hope that'll be enough to fix it.

[aulin]

I tried updating my sound card drivers, but I see no change. Too bad.

[DjNDB]

Okay, let's try something different.

What does the error message show if you click to see more information?

Where did you install the game to? I noticed an external Hard disk and i read about possible problems when the games are installed there.

You could also try disconnecting the Bluetooth device (and others which are non-essential).

Finally you can try running the games during a clean boot.

Booting clean in Windows XP:
1. Click Start --> Run --> Type MSCONFIG --> Click OK
2. On the General tab, choose Selective Startup
3. Uncheck Process SYSTEM.INI file
4. Uncheck Process WIN.INI file
5. Uncheck Load Startup Items
6. Click on the Services tab
7. At the bottom, check Hide All Microsoft Services
8. Uncheck all boxes in the window or click the button labeled Disable All
6. Click OK
7. Click Restart
8. After reboot, run the game to see if it works.

After performing the necessary steps, restore your system by doing the following:

1. Click Start --> Run --> Type MSCONFIG--> Click OK
2. On the General tab, choose Normal Startup
3. Click OK
4. Click YES, when asked to restart your computer

Based on Will's post

[aulin]

If I click to see more info (I can't believe I've become blind to that link from getting so many of those Windows error reports! :O) I get this:

AppName: sammax101.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: sammax101.exe
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 002dcea5

If I replace the patched exe with the backed up original, the same error message reads:

AppName: sammax101.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: sammax101.exe
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 0035aee0

I don't know if this helps. There's even more information (including a stack dump) but that's not copyable.

I didn't actually have any Bluetooth device attached. The only attached peripherals besides mouse and keyboard are two printers. I might've had a USB stick attached as well. I think the Bluetooth listing in the DxDiag has something to do with sound drivers for using Bluetooth headphones, but the dongle wasn't attached, so that shouldn't be a problem, I'd think.

I can try a clean boot and see if that works, but if it does, how can I know what was wrong? Is my only option to activate one autostart item at a time and rebooting? That would take aaaages. :P

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by aulin

I think the Bluetooth listing in the DxDiag has something to do with sound drivers for using Bluetooth headphones, but the dongle wasn't attached, so that shouldn't be a problem, I'd think.

I can try a clean boot and see if that works, but if it does, how can I know what was wrong? Is my only option to activate one autostart item at a time and rebooting? That would take aaaages. :P

The driver could be a problem, but there's no way to know for sure except uninstalling it.

If the clean boot works i would start with only deactivating security software in the next run.
If you don't have a hunch what software causes the problem, you can use Bisection as an efficient way to track it down.

[aulin]

Would it make any difference just deactivating the Bluetooth units temporarily in the device manager, or would the driver still interfere?

Ah! Why didn't I think of that?! :P I'll try a clean boot now.

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by aulin

Would it make any difference just deactivating the Bluetooth units temporarily in the device manager, or would the driver still interfere?

You can try.

[aulin]

I did a diagnostic start (i.e. not even MS Services started): Season 1 had the same error message, whereas Season 2 complained about missing sound drivers.

Rebooted with MS Services starting (all else switched off) and now even Season 2 was back to square one, with no difference compared to a full boot.

I then opened the device manager, selectively deactivating devices, notably Bluetooth sound drivers and a Daemon Tools DVD drive. The only difference was that when every sound device except for the default SB X-Fi and the Microsoft ones that can't be deactivated, Season 2 showed a black screen for a couple of seconds before shutting down like earlier. I'm getting grey hairs here. :/

[DjNDB]

For season 1, have you tried putting the DVD in your other DVD drive?

Also please try if the Free Download S&M episode 104 behaves differently.
I'm not sure, but you might want to uninstall the DVD version first.

Originally Posted by aulin

The only difference was that when every sound device except for the default SB X-Fi and the Microsoft ones that can't be deactivated, Season 2 showed a black screen for a couple of seconds before shutting down like earlier. I'm getting grey hairs here. :/

That's a good start. Have you tried uninstalling the Bluetooth driver yet?

Please also run the DirectX updater.