Empire Earth - Doesn't start! Read error occurs during start

[ZuLu]

Hello there!

Empire Earth doesn't start at all. - I've already tried the "solution" from this forum without success.

1. Starting Empire Earth only turns the screen to black.
(to be precise it turns black and when the error occurs it turns to grey, but there's no error-sound)
2. After hitting a key a Error-Window appears:

EE 1.04:

"Empire Earth.Exe - Application Error"

"The instruction at "0x008d5702" referenced at "0x00000004"". The memory could not be "read"

EE 2.0:

"Empire Earth.Exe - Application Error"

"The instruction at "0x00b0923d" referenced at "0x00000004"". The memory could not be "read"

The memory adresses only change when using different patches.

My system:
Win XP SP3
DirectX 9.0c (March 2009)
Empire Earth 1.04 (also tried the newest patch 2.0 - same error)
Q6600 @ 3.0 GHz
4 GByte DDR2
GeForce 8800 GTS 512 (Driver: 182.06 - also tried an older one [169.21])
Gigabyte P35 DS-4 Rev. 2 (BIOS F12)

I tried the following:
Reinstalling EE (with cleaned reg)
Patches 1.04 & 2.0
Moving the intro movies so they could not be loaded
Updating DirectX
Different Resolutions (via Regedit, Astray+ or on Desktop)
Compatibility Modes (Win 2000 - the others dont work)

Now ... I don't know what to do to get it up and running -.-

Can anyone provide help or ideas to fix this problem?

Thanks in advance!

[Sexacutioner]

are you loading off of a disk or off of a download version

if on disk, think ask peow, he used to have this problem if i remember right
think its a video driver problem though thats what usually causes the black screen

[ZuLu]

Hey!

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@ Sexacutioner:

I'm loading off disk / image (also tried no-cd exe without effect).

peow130 only said that it was a video card driver problem and the solution was:

Well thanks for the input. I changed my EE Video driver from the new "asus: driver to the original "primary" driver and so far so good. Once again thanks for the support.

But my problem is that I don't get into the menus / game itself.
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Today I tried following nVidia Drivers:
190.38 and 175.16

So now I tried 4 of 14 WHQL-certified / recommended nVidia drivers which support my 8800 GTS 512 (169.21, 175.16, 182.06, 190.38).

Any other ideas or something I didn't notice?

Edit:

It seems that the problem is only in older Sierra Software (e.g.: Aliens versus Predator II)
I Noticed that AvP2 is producing the same errors, at different memory addresses.
Both, EE and AvP2 have a size of 0.89 MB in the software-listing of the control panel.

Hope this helps to recognize the problem ...

[yoshi135]

I have the same problem plz help

[ZuLu]

Hello guys!

I solved the problem myself.

The solution is quite simple:

Move the bar in the display properties of the DirectX acceleration (Settings - Troubleshooting) on the 4th position (disables advanced graphics- and cursor-acceleration), "Write Combining" enabled (which should be enabled by default) then try to start EE.

(If this doesn't work: I tried other settings before, from no acceleration to the 4th - maybe this is part of the full solution, but I cant recreate the error anymore ... in fact I don't want to recreate it )

Once EE was started you can move the bar back to full acceleration, no idea why but it works for me.

There might be some translation-errors in this post since my OS (and native language) is german.

This also worked for my problems with an read error in Aliens versus Predator 2 - it also starts now with full acceleration.

My graphics driver at the moment is the nVidia 182.06.

Greets
ZuLu

PS: @ yoshi135 - Please write if this helped you out

[yoshi135]

>No it dident work... I tried every bar from zero to full on both games and i still got the error.
>when i tried bars 0-3 I couldent even start the scenerio movies unlike in 3-full i could see the movies and then I would get an error before the menu screen.
> i also read the error again and the numbers and letters were different from yours (with and without a patch).
>are there any other setting that you changed?
>thanks for the help btw

[yoshi135]

o wait does it have to do with the "lowlevelengine.dll"?

[ZuLu]

Actually we don't have the same problem yoshi - I couldn't even see the intro-movies.

When I was able to see them, the whole game was starting well.
But my error was also in the LowLevelEngine.dll (I isolated the problem until nothing more than three files could cause the error)

Maybe you could try to Change the Rendering in the Registry, unfortunately I think this won't solve the problem:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SSSI\Empire Earth]
"Rasterizer Name"="Direct3D Hardware TnL" [or "Direct3D" (default)]

Also you could try to experiment with compatibility modes and resolutions if you haven't yet.

"Game Bit Depth"=dword:00000020
"Game Window Height"=dword:00000400
"Game Window Width"=dword:00000500
"Screen ID"=dword:00000000
"Texture Bit Depth"=dword:00000020
"Wait for VSync"=dword:00000000

These are the Settings I'm using at the moment.

Using another LowLevelEngine.dll only caused other errors with EE.

[yoshi135]

Never mind im too lazy to try and fix it.
Im playing on my other computer and it works..but there are a couple of bugs i cant fix
when I start a game you cant see the recources, they blink and flash,...and also when I move my mouse over the brown part of the screen it gets covered with other pictures of the mouse Icons =(
Perphaps you have an anwser? =D

[yoshi135]

HAHA never mind I got it (Had to change graphic acceleration hardware) In-game
Everythings fine now I can play =D
Thx for the help

[Jazz]

what exactly did you do?

[qwas]

I have the same proplem.
When I start the Empire Earth.exe (cracked and pached to 2.00) then after the intro movie appears a black screen and when I press Alt key or another key then I show a runtime error!
PLEASE HELP ME!!!

[Datguy]

Same problem, but I do not understand your solution.