Played until the garbage, now game won't start

[Shamgar]

I bought this retail when it came out and had fun with it but never finished. During the summer sale I picked up the three pack on steam and have now finally got to this in my backlog of games to play. I am using complete 2009.

I was plying fine but now today I tried to play and it gives me this error message "XR_3DA.exe caused ACCESS_VIOLATION" which seems to be pretty popular.
I validated and it found one file which was 400kb but still no change. validates fine now.
I've seen so many solutions all of which are so weird like logging into the computer in guest mode :/ anyone have this problem and how did you fix it?

[mdk_137]

Interesting pal. Same problem here. Same conditions. No solution in sight. The game is fantastic but these bugs demotivate anyone.

[antarctico]

The crash is caused by gamespy.dll (located in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. bin folder). Basically, gamespy.dll is trying to access the GameSpy servers, but the Stalker SOC multiplayer servers are down or have been turned off, and this causes the game engine to crash. The bad part about this is GameSpy sold off its "Powered by GameSpy" online services to some cell phone gaming company called Glu, and Glu has not been good about keeping the servers up and, for some games, just shutting them down. The only way to get Stalker to start is to disconnect from the Internet (unplug your modem, or kill your net connection in your Windows "My Network Places"). If Glu hasn't just now done this, eventually they will shut off the Stalker SOC servers, and then some hack will have to be created to lobotomize gamespy.dll. :(

[KozMia2613]

O wow it works, Thanks antarctico simple enough, and thanks for the background info as well.

[mdk_137]

hey, i found this site with information about finding the error log:
http://www.metacognix.com/stlkrsoc/CrashesStillInTheGame.html
I opened the error log with notepad++ and found this odd reference at end of file:
(...)
Loading DLL: xrGameSpy.dll
! Unable to init Server Browser!
stack trace:
(...)
this thread seems to have a viable solution to the problem:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1413521

[KozMia2613]

Mdk i got that as well, turning off the internet seems to work, but idk first time i was playing for 10 min then it kicked me out

[Pellepappa]

Hahhahaha!! I thank thee Sir Antarctico!

[_W@NT&D_$N!P&R]

This is because of the gamespy servers are down. You have to disconect from the internet completely and start up steam in offline mode and play stalker game. You can play this game with internet on and steam offline mode.

[Shamgar]

Wow. Who would have thought. This has been EXTREMELY helpful. At least I know how to continue playing if I choose to. Thank you antarctico and if there was still a rep system you would have it!