Fearless Son on 30/11/2008 at 23:17
So my copy of Thief 2 will not start up. It begins, goes to a blackscreen, then quits with a standard error message. I know, you all have probably heard that one a lot and your first impulse would be to say that I need to install the proper codecs. Yes, I did an exhaustive search of the forums looking for this particular issue. :)
Indeed, the codecs
were a problem. I confirmed this by opening the movie files in Windows Media Player, which caused WMP to crash. So I followed the suggestions and got the proper codecs installed. That seemed to remove the issue with the movies causing crashes in Windows Media Player; I could open up the movies in that and they would play just fine.
However, when I open the application it
still crashes after going black. I went and grabbed the old Thief 2 demo (a classic of game demos if I may say so) and started that up.
That started up fine, so I know that the Dark Engine
can be launched on my machine. It crashed after a few minutes, but that was to be expected since I did not disable multithreading on the demo copy. That said, I
did disable the multithreading on my full copy of Thief 2.
Of note, there is one interesting thing to mention that seemed to differ from what was expected. When I tried registering the codecs by running:
Quote:
regsvr32 "J:\Games\Thief2\LGVID.AX"
And that produced a dialogue box with the following results:
Quote:
The module "J:\Games\Thief2\LGVID.AX" was loaded but the call to DLLRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80070005
I know the codecs took because they start up in WMP, but for some reason the error persists in the game. I think that the error code has something to do with Vista's unfortunate tendancy to want to over-protect everything even from the account that is theoretically its administrator. :p
For the record, I am running a brand new machine bought a few days ago, Pentium Intel Core 2 quad, running Windows Vista Home Premium. The copy of Thief 2 I had was on an external hard drive on my old machine that I have hooked into the new one, so no re-installation has happened.
Anyone seen this before?
jtr7 on 30/11/2008 at 23:33
The problems with Vista are still being worked out. If you would, please, tell us how you changed the affinity for your game. Did you do it through the task manager, or did you follow the instructions in the FAQ, for instance? Did you set the affinity to a single processor for both the Thief2.exe and Thief2.icd?
Admittedly, I don't know squat about Vista.:p
Fearless Son on 1/12/2008 at 06:45
Thinking that perhaps I needed to apply DDFix, I went (
http://timeslip.chorrol.com/ddfix.html) here and followed all instructions. The GUI version seems not to work under Vista so I had to manually hex edit my copy of Thief2.exe (after making an backup of the executable.)
The DDFix kept the game from crashing without explaination, but it still dumps me back to the desktop, this time complaining that I do not have DirectX 7 or higher installed. This is of course absurd, I am running Vista for The Builder's sake! Still, I recall that the Dark Engine did not care for Windows NT and refused to work with anything with an NT kernal. This unfortunately extends to newer NT-based opperating systems like Vista, so I wonder if that is part of it.
Anyone know a method to force Thief to ignore the results of a DirectX version check?
Fearless Son on 1/12/2008 at 06:52
Ah, now here is something interesting. It appears that I do not have a "thief2.icd" file. This might explain why it is not working.
In fact, a quick explorer search of all my Thief series directories reveals no file with "icd" in it. I included the demo version of Thief 2 in that search (in case it had a file I might copy over to replace my missing one) and that did not have one either, yet I know that works.
This is quite puzzling. Looking back at the output from the "processor.bat" file to disable hyperthreading, I see that it also failed to find a "thief2.icd" file and thus did not update it.
Is it possible for someone to email me a copy of their thief2.icd file? Or some other way for me to reconstruct mine? I mean, if that is the problem then...
bikerdude on 1/12/2008 at 14:31
Has anyopne suggested installing the k-lite codec pack..? when you install it, make sure you tick the "indeo" options on the 1st page of the installer screen.
biker
jtr7 on 1/12/2008 at 18:07
Please tell me you own a legitimate copy of the game.:weird:
The *.ICD file is on the game disc (disc 2). If you purchased the downloadable version, I hope you still have the *.zip. You could make backups of any custom files you have in your install, and reinstall the game.
Good luck!
Fearless Son on 1/12/2008 at 20:12
I do have a legitmate copy of the game. I can post a digital photo of the box I have for it if you need a demonstration. I believe that I picked up the double-pack version that had Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age on it. I later bought Thief: Gold seperately (paying for a game that I already own most of.) I hope that is sufficient "cred" about my desire to see developers rewarded for good games. :)
However, I can say with some misfortune that I have not seen my CD of Thief 2 in several years. I somehow got lost in the shuffle (I have lived in four different places since I bought it.) As a result, I no longer have the CD that came with it. The reason I started playing it again is because I heard about Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age and I really wanted to play that expantion. I did not believe that it would require the CD to function, so I was not overly worried about my lack of one.
jtr7 on 1/12/2008 at 20:20
Hopefully, that one file is the only one you'll need, then.:o :)
Fearless Son on 1/12/2008 at 20:23
Okay, I installed the K-Lite Codec Pack. Was nice since it had a 64-bit version. However, Thief 2 still quits with the same problem: "DirectX 7 or higher is not installed on this computer."
