Strong Bad: Ran once, now won't open

[Opio]

I bought the whole series of Strong Bad's game, and then ran it upon purchase. It ran fine till I stopped playing a couple hours later. Now I want to play it again but it never gets past this screen: http://i34.tinypic.com/e63gj4.png

I'm on a GeForce 8600m, Intel T5550 processor laptop. I have tried uninstalling, reinstalling, and rebooting.

Now I can't finish the game today while I'm at home with my family, while my little sister can watch Gotta go back to college...

Any help?

[Mofreaka]

I am having the exact same problem. No luck so far. Help would be appreciated

[Seg]

Do either of you have any Internet security software running?

Also, can you launch Internet Explorer and make sure it's running properly?

The crash at that part of the process is when we invoke an instance of Internet Explorer to display wrapper content. Regardless of weather you have other browsers installed and default, we can only invoke IE in this manor. It would be nice to have another browser's engine, but the short explanation is that it's not possible for us to do so.

[Opio]

I have no security software other than the Windows defaults, and I have disabled UAC.

Internet Explorer works fine for me, although Firefox is my default browser.

[Seg]

Ok, let's try this:

1) Click on the "Start" menu.
2) Click on "Run...".
3) Type "cmd" (without "s) and click OK.
4) In the window that appears, type in the following, quotes and all:

rd /s "%APPDATA%\SecuROM"

5) Answer Y to the Y/N question and press Enter.
6) Start the game normally. You may need to reenter your serial key if you haven't used your Telltale Games login to activate the game.

[Opio]

I just followed your instructions and unfortunately it had no effect.

[Moosh]

Seg, I just read this thread and now understand the source of my version of this problem. I do not have internet explorer on my computer, as it is a horrible program and poses a high security risk. I uninstalled Explorer a long time ago and couldn't be happier.

Anyway, when I start up the game, I get a little window with two broken image icons and not much else. I assume this is because the program is trying to use internet explorer, which does not exist on my computer. Is there any resolution to this problem, or have I just paid for five games which I'll never be able to play?

[tabacco]

Originally Posted by Moosh

Seg, I just read this thread and now understand the source of my version of this problem. I do not have internet explorer on my computer, as it is a horrible program and poses a high security risk. I uninstalled Explorer a long time ago and couldn't be happier.

Anyway, when I start up the game, I get a little window with two broken image icons and not much else. I assume this is because the program is trying to use internet explorer, which does not exist on my computer. Is there any resolution to this problem, or have I just paid for five games which I'll never be able to play?

If you'd like a refund, you can write to support@telltalegames.com and we can help you out with that. As a general rule, once you start uninstalling stuff that isn't meant to be uninstalled, we can't really support it.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Originally Posted by Moosh

Seg, I just read this thread and now understand the source of my version of this problem. I do not have internet explorer on my computer, as it is a horrible program and poses a high security risk. I uninstalled Explorer a long time ago and couldn't be happier.

If you don't open it, I'm not sure how it can pose such as "high security risk" (not that does *). Anyway, you could just install it, but get rid of it from your Start menu/desktop/etc and pretend it's not there.

*I don't want a browser war

[Seg]

Opio:

Can you try downloading, running, and installing Sam & Max Episode 104? I want to see if this problem is unique to Strong Bad or something more general.

[Opio]

OK, Sam &　Ｍａｘ　works fine, even when I close it and restart it. It's a problem unique to Homestar Ruiner.

[deadlinejon]

Originally Posted by tabacco

If you'd like a refund, you can write to support@telltalegames.com and we can help you out with that. As a general rule, once you start uninstalling stuff that isn't meant to be uninstalled, we can't really support it.

wow, you guys give refunds?

[Tester Scott]

Originally Posted by deadlinejon

wow, you guys give refunds?

Why would we make you pay for a game you can't play? We will try our best to get the game running but sometimes it just won't on certain machines and the customer shouldn't have to suffer for something like that.

[Seg]

Have you run the DirectX web installer? Sadly, having DirectX 10 doesn't mean you have a more recent version of DirectX. Running this tool will get both DirectX 9 and 10 up to date on Vista.

If that doesn't work, I need you to do a bit of investigation for me. I want to know if the contents of the wrapper are being exported correctly. This will be a bit involved and will only gather information, but it will help me figure out the issue.

1) Make sure you don't have any Telltale Game running.

2) Call up your user folder. This is usually at C:\Users\*\
(The * being your Windows user name.)

3) Click on the address bar in this window once. This should turn the display into the normal folder structure.

4) Append the string so that it looks something like this:
C:\Users\*\AppData\Local\Temp\

5) There's going to be a lot of stuff here, but I want you to focus on the folders. Any folders with a long string of random letters and number you should delete. As an example: 26F753877B6D46339BA9F01A5E954547

6) Sort the folder by date modified, with the most recent folders on top and in view.

7) With this folder still open, launch Strong Bad. When you get the crash, DON'T CLOSE IT! Keep the error box up for the time being.

8) Examine the temp folder. Did a new folder with a similar super-long string of numbers and letters show up?

If so, look into this folder. It should have a subfolder called 'launcher' and then a bunch of files and folders inside it. If you don't see any of these things at all, tell me. If you do, tell me.

[Opio]

Got the latest DirectX, no change.

I did as you instructed, and it was just as you said, now I have that folder called launcher, and it has success.html and the other files that look like they're from the launcher.

Just for kicks I tried opening success.html in IE and letting the script run, and it gave me an infinite refresh cycle.

If all this trouble is because of copy protection, I have to say I'm really disappointed that I can't yet play the game because I actually bought it.

[Techneon]

I'm having the same problem, I gave the demo a go so see how it would run on PC (since I'd already played it on wii, I figured it'd be better size and price wise to keep it on pc)

It ran perfectly, upped the resolution, still fine, I then tried plugging the laptop into my LCD (to replicate the console feel) and quitting the game to reopen the window on said LCD. It didn't open, it froze at the login window.

After an hour of reinstalling, redownloading, restarting and repeating, I've had no luck. I seems the closest I got was the actual 'launch game' screen (with characters and all) I click the starting button and it just sits there, calims it's not responding and has to be ctrl-alt-del'd.

I tried the cmd thing, directx10, my firewall is off and I even tried a paid version to see if anything changes (and in good faith the problem will be fixed). The only thing I can think of is maybe Norton is doing somehing.

any help would be awesome

[Seg]

Contacted Opio & Techneon via PM to figure this out more directly, but I will repost fixes here on the thread.

[Seg]

Opio:

It looks like your running Eset Antivirus. Can you try disabling it and then running the game? It may be doing something funny with the game.

[Opio]

I just installed ESET when upgrading my DirectX, so the problem predates the antivirus software. I disabled ESET and it had no effect on the problem.

[Opio]

So... is this ever going to get fixed? Do you recommend downloading a *cough cough*