Issues with several games (HOMM V and more)

[Hiroshi]

DISCLAIMER : LONG ASS THREAD.

Okay I'm tired of this ♥♥♥♥ and I've read many, many, many people complaining about this. I'll take HOMM V as my example and I want to have a thread here so that people with the same bug(s) can come and complete the info that I gathered.

I've been gathering info on what happens : The game simply won't launch. Clicking the play button will make the preparing to launch window of steam, the process of the game will be displayed in the task manager along one or two rundll that will appear, one of which will never go away unless you restart the computer.

HOMM V is not the only game with that problem. Obivion, vampire the masquerade, morrowind, Skyrim from time to time, Max pain and much much more that I've seen on forums.

Most fixes, and in a lot of cases, no fix will work. Some might work once until you restart the computer.

I've tested a full reinstall of steam. Of gog galaxy. Of the ENITRE operating system (windows 7 64 bit). With and without antivirus whatsoever. Changing config files from the main and secondary directory (i.e. the config file for oblivion in C/ or whatever your drive is named.) Still no luck.

I went around many forums, with posts ranging from 2012-2019 with the same bug but all the fixes didn't work for most people around 2018-2019. Black screens, freezes seems to be bundled with the no launch problem that often, if not always, end up as a silent crash ( i.e. The game is closed but will remain as running in steam and will continue to be seen as running as long as you either end the rundll process which doesn't work all the time or have to restart the computer.)

I have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idea what is going on with all this and aside from gathering info on forums, I don't have the knowledge to dive deeper in registry or the likes.

Yes I've checked admin right, Yes I've checked drivers, Yes I've checked the settings in the compatibility tab seperatly and together as much as possible.

[Muppet among Puppets]

When did it start to happen and what changed or happened around that time?

All drivers installed?

[Hiroshi]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

When did it start to happen and what changed or happened around that time?

All drivers installed?

As I've mentioned all drivers are installed. It's hard to tell when it started, given that one day it would launch without a problem and the next it wouldn't which is why It's hard for me to track the source of the issue(s). It doesn't affect just one game and most of the games affected are Steam releases and very few gog games.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Do you have another computer?

You could ask in the forum of the games if others have that problem too. If not, it might be a windows installment problem.

[Hiroshi]

I've tested the games on two different computer on top of mine. One never had steam installed and the other was an old computer with decent hardware. The problem remains the same, The game homm V did start once but when I tried later that day booting up the computer and launching the game the problem persist.

I've posted here in the general forums because the forum of the game have all the same fixes that won't work for a lot of people posting there.

The windows installation was clean from start to finish. One was windows 7 64 bit (mine) the old computer was also windows 7 64 bit. the third computer has windows 10.

[Muppet among Puppets]

The problem happens on several pc.

What is homm V?

The other games also have that problem on the other computers?

[Muppet among Puppets]

Do all the computers have the same antivirus or security?

[Hiroshi]

Homm V is Heroes of might and magic 5. It happens with oblivion, morrowind, vampire the masquerade, max pain, skyrim from time to time. Other games that I don't own have had the same issues when i checked a lot of forums while searching for a fix.

Yes same problems with all three computers but on the older one it only happened after I've launched the game once. I could play the game but when I restarted it or even try and launched the game again soon after it wouldn't launch and would just show up in the task manager but would not open any window.

Three different anti viruses. Mine has Avast, the old one has Avira and the last one has Norton.

Note that I both tried disabling the anti virus on each computer to see if it changed anything and no luck on that either.

[Muppet among Puppets]

I see you do the right steps in testing.
And you excluded a lot of things.

If it wasnt on 3 computers, i would have pointed on windows installation.

I do not see the pattern that combines all these games and several computers.

[Hiroshi]

That is why I'm trying to set up a thread to gather more information and maybe theory. The only common denominator here is steam itself as far as I can check. Maybe something is going on with the registry entries or some subprogram within steam or windows that would be common to both windows 7 and windows 10 ?

What bothers me is that in the task manager the process of rundll32.exe is always there after I've launched a game. One only goes away when i end the process itself, it has a memory usage and another one is also in the process but doesn't seem to have a description according to task manager.

Even going into services nothing is highlighted and searching manually didn't bring much on that end.

[Crazy Tiger]

Could be an issue with one of the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables. If not properly, or not at all, installed, it can cause issues with games.

[Hiroshi]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Could be an issue with one of the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables. If not properly, or not at all, installed, it can cause issues with games.

On a fresh installation of windows I did install all MVC R from scratch and even made sure that they were up to date before the testing.

[Flava Clown]

Originally posted by Hiroshi:

On a fresh installation of windows I did install all MVC R from scratch and even made sure that they were up to date before the testing.

Did you try to run Steam as admin?

Also .net framework 2.0 isn't the same as 3.5 or 4.0 you might lack the right version. You can check what is installed with Framework Detect ( https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Framework-Detector.shtml )
or dotNETInspector ( http://firedancer-software.com/software/dotnetinspector/ or portable: https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/dotnetinspector-portable )

[Hiroshi]

Steam run as default as admin since I ran into problems with that a some point before. I have other more recent games that works just fine and apparently net framework is also up to date ? I don't know if I would need every single version of net framework but that would seem a bit odd. Given the fact that I was able to run the games before without any issues.

the results for the scan shows I have 1.0 ; 1.1 ; 2.0 ; 3.0; 3.5

I doubt a game older than 10 years old or close to it would require a 4.0 version or there's just something I don't understand about all that.

[Flava Clown]

Originally posted by Hiroshi:

I doubt a game older than 10 years old or close to it would require a 4.0 version or there's just something I don't understand about all that.

A driver might require it.

[Hiroshi]

All my drivers are up to date, I even checked the Nvidia app. I would guess that if a driver is installed and the 4.0 version is required it would be installed with it ? I checked other drivers on my computer and everything seems up to date too.