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Game giveaway installer idles indefinitely

(18 posts) (5 voices)

Started 8 years ago by bovi
Latest reply from mikiem2

bovi
Member

Just letting you know that all the last couple of games I have tried to install from here have all failed to install on my system (3? 4? 5? More? Can't remember, it's been over several months). The activation window stays up for a couple of seconds, then it goes away and there is nothing visible and no further progress. The process remains idle indefinitely, until killed. I've left one of them going for over an hour to be sure.

I assume this only affects a minority of downloaders as people are still voting the games up and down, but I thought you should know some people have problems with the installers you're creating lately.

I'm running Windows 7, if that makes any difference. The games I have successfully installed in the past on this computer from the site include those below, so the problem has arisen sometime after all of these giveaways were run. I can't remember which one was the latest one I'm afraid.

Brink of Consciousness - The Lonely Hearts Murders
Dark Angels - Masquerade Of Shadows
Deadly Voltage - Rise Of The Invincible
Dragon Keeper
Dream Hills - Captured Magic
Dreamscapes The Sandman
Eternal Journey - New Atlantis
Fall Of The New Age
Autumn's Treasures - Jade Coin
Munchausen
Pahelika - Revelations
Pahelika - Secret Legends
Questerium - Sinister Trinity
Riddles Of The Past
Vampire Saga - Pandora's Box

Posted 8 years ago #
ChrisS
Administrator

You might see if (a) disabling your security software for the time it takes to install the software; or (b) booting in "safe mode with networking", installing the software, and then rebooting normally works.

Kaspersky has long had a problem with some systems and recently AVG, ZoneAlarm, and Zemana Antilogger apparently joined the club.

Posted 8 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

Just letting you know that all the last couple of games I have tried to install from here have all failed to install on my system... I assume this only affects a minority of downloaders as people are still voting the games up and down... I'm running Windows 7, if that makes any difference...

Don't know how widespread any problems are, because few people report whether it worked or not -- all anyone can do is assume that if there are however many thousands of downloads daily, it must be working or people wouldn't come back. Personally I haven't had any problems running any of the GOTD offers in my XP VM with the free version of AVG, or my win7 VM running Microsoft Security Essentials.

As far as win7 goes, that **may** make a difference, but perhaps not in the way you'd think... security software packages are designed to work in most versions of Windows, but to accomplish that you have to sort of embrace the philosophy: "Jack of all trades, master of none." Making the software work in 8 or 10 might make it work less well in earlier versions of Windows -- with Kaspersky at least my very brief test suggests that is the case.

That's Not to say that you should upgrade your copy of Windows -- that's totally up to you, & hopefully based on more criteria than how well your security software works with GOTD. Threats constantly evolve, so security measures & software must also. Chances are that's why you used to be able to run GOTD games, & now you can't -- both Windows & your security software have changed, and will change again, guaranteed. If you did upgrade Windows, there's always the chance that future updates will put you right back where you are now re: GOTD.

OTOH that same evolution will hopefully lead to this sort of problem disappearing entirely -- something that needs to happen as encrypted files come to be used more often, both for DRM & security. Until then the 3 main choices if you have problems with GOTD offers [or other encrypted files] seems to be 1) as Chris suggested, temporarily disabling security software, 2) changing brands of security software [most are not broken re: encrypted files], or 3) use a VM or sandbox software running without one of those troublesome brands of security software. Browse the forum & you'll find discussions of all 3.

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

I do indeed have AVG installed, however even if I disable the antivirus for the duration, the installer does not behave any differently.

Posted 8 years ago #
ChrisS
Administrator

Did you try the "safe boot with networking" alternative? If not, try it with today's giveaway (you don't need to install it, just run setup.exe long enough to get to the installation screen). AVG might be the problem or it might be another security program that normally runs.

Posted 8 years ago #
Whiterabbit-uk
Games Guru

Hi Bovi, have you checked the event logs immediately after you try to install?

We rarely get less than 5K downloads each day over on the game side of the project and sometimes its been as high as 40K + depending on the game. The giveaway side has many more downloads than the game side, with downloads rarely dropping below 30K and as high as 100K. As mentioned above by Chris or Mikiem, very few community members have posted about these problems, which would point to some conflict with the way you have your system set up. I'm not very teccy with computers, I know enought to sort my own problems out, usually by trial and error (commonly referred to as fault finding), but unless I have a computer in front of me I find it difficult to help.

Both Chris and Mikiem are the best guys to chat to. Hopefully they will be able to help solve this problem.

I presume you've check the FAQ's thread over in the game discussion sticky section?

p.s. do you have similar problems with the software given away on the giveaway site?

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

Oddly, that installer (Aplus Splitter and Rejoiner) does not "work" the same way. It similarly shows the window about connecting to the site, then when that window disappears, instead of idling (or installing!), it crashes:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: setup.exe_Aplus File Splitter and ReJoiner
Application Version: 2.0.1.5
Application Timestamp: 2a425e19
Fault Module Name: StackHash_bf2f
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c000041d
Exception Offset: 773011f1
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1044
Additional Information 1: bf2f
Additional Information 2: bf2fad4f846e226167d9682fa24bb27c
Additional Information 3: eda9
Additional Information 4: eda91533b922338153a41c7d8cb2825c

Then it cheerfully says "successfully activated" and gives me a key :p.

By the way, I tried to run the last game giveaway again just now to see if that worked differently as well now. It does, in that it (quite correctly) says the giveaway period is over and shuts down. This indicates that earlier, in the giveaway period, it successfully connected and activated before the idling starts.

I'll try again in safe mode on a later game giveaway. Those seems to operate more consistently like eachother.

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

The event viewer shows no error in the timeframe when setup was run on the game on Sunday. Only information events, and those are from "RestartManager" and "VSS".

Today's app giveaway turns up with an "Application Error" in the log though.

Posted 8 years ago #
Whiterabbit-uk
Games Guru

Hi Bovi, was Googling some of the lines in the error message you posted (i.e. Fault Module Name: StackHash_bf2f) and found the following in these very same forums, posted a month ago. Basically the same error message as you are getting, though with a different application. (see image below). He was able to install the giveaway by using the installer for final draft, which he downloaded from the developer of that software; I presume he used the demo to do that? The author of the issue, Water2ice eventually solved the problem by disabling his AGV anti virus. Do you have more than one security software running in the background?

You can find the thread HERE.

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

No, only AVG. I did however not disable that when installing the application giveaway. As that is not behaving the same way and I have no interest in the application itself, I'll rather wait to troubleshoot more tomorrow, when there is another giveaway.

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

I did have BitDefender installed on the computer earlier by the way. But I've reinstalled Windows since then, so there really shouldn't be any lingering residue of that.

Posted 8 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

Bitdefender **usually** hasn't had a problem with the GOTD offers. The free version of AVG 2015 may be different, or I may have different settings [with AVG there are quite a few], or it may be because I use the free version of AVG in my XP Mode VM, but that has never caused a problem preventing a GOTD setup from running. It has however sometimes objected to the actual software the GOTD setup has been installing, so I set it to disabled until restart beforehand, having Bitdefender check the program's files when I bring it out of the VM into Windows 7.

Have you tried Safe Mode with networking as Chris suggested? That most always works.

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

Not yet, as I don't have any installer working the same way. I tried today's app, which seems to work differently than both yesterday's and the games' installers. This one doesn't even include a setup.gcd file and seems to not try to connect to the site at all, so it appears it is fundamentally different. It also successfully gets to the installation wizard.

I'll try more troubleshooting in the weekend when there is a game giveaway, as those seem to work consistently like eachother.

Posted 8 years ago #
jamiea
Member

As already posted, I've experienced both recent problems mentioned also by some others - Bovi's endless idling and the 'game has been activated' notification on uninstalled games. Tried all the suggestions in game and forum threads and faq plus addtl without success.

Better luck to you Bovi. Will come back to check the thread in case something new turns up.

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

Tried today's game, "Monstafish". Running normally, it crashes like the splitter application:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: setup.exe_unknown
Application Version: 1.0.3.0
Application Timestamp: 47f4655c
Fault Module Name: StackHash_8063
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c000041d
Exception Offset: 779a11f1
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1044
Additional Information 1: 8063
Additional Information 2: 80639fe55050dc9fc1efd1590ee3f5bc
Additional Information 3: ed15
Additional Information 4: ed15a961e908705f3748ec56680fb60f

Running with AVG disabled, the same crash.

Running in Safe mode with networking, Windows Installer refuses to run (paraphrasing, "Windows installer cannot be accessed in Safe mode, try again when running normally").

Don't see what other things I could change up.

Posted 8 years ago #
ChrisS
Administrator

The stackhash error points to a problem with your security software. If you install a bunch of GOTD offers then I'd change to another company if possible.

However, there are a number of things you can do to resolve the problem:

Use your startup manager (or msconfig) and manually turn off the entries for AVG. Reboot, install the software, then manually turn the AVG entries back on and start the AVG service (no need to reboot, just start AVG manually).

Download and run SafeMSI.exe (site contains a link to the file and confirms that it works on Windows 7)

More difficult: How to make Windows Installer work in Safe Mode and Windows 7: Uninstall and Remove Software in Safe Mode

Posted 8 years ago #
bovi
Member

Running the installer in safe mode does indeed work on today's giveaway (it crashed like yesterday's when run normally).

Given the hassle of having to restart twice in order to install any giveaway currently, I think I won't be installing any as long as that is the only way to make it work, unless any of them really stand out - I won't be trying any just to see if they're any good.

As reference for any others with the same problem who are willing to make the effort to work around it, what made it work for me was to run these two commands in the command prompt (you get to the command prompt by tapping Windows+R, then typing cmd in the box).

1. REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"

2. net start msiserver

Once these two commands complete, run setup.exe.

Posted 8 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

I wouldn't think you'd have to worry about the Windows Installer [MSI] too often. Most apps don't use it, many of those that do use msi, just use it for [OMHO often unneeded] C/C++ runtime installs, & that's the 1st game on GOTD AFAIK that used it.

Just FWIW the free version of AVG in my XP Mode VM didn't have a problem with MonstaFish, though the game's setup wouldn't complete because of no .NET 4. In my win7 HP 32 VM with Security Essentials, & on my wife's PC with win7 HP 64 with Bitdefender, didn't have any problems.

Posted 8 years ago #

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