Thief: The Dark Project (v1.33) crashes after opening ads and movie

Mikoulos on 30/8/2008 at 04:55

Hello there! I found Thief: Deadly Shadows through GameTap a while ago and recently got my friend to give up his copy of The Dark Project. I was really looking forward to playing this game after how fun Deadly Shadows was, but I've hit a major snag!

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 with 2 gigs of RAM, my processor is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual core 5200+, and I have an nVidia GeForce 8600 GT. For some reason, I'm able to see the Eidos and Looking Glass ads, as well as watch the intro movie directly after those, but when the game hits the menu, it suddenly crashes. I get a split-second glimpse of the main menu with the new, save, load game and quit buttons, but then it goes black and Windows wants to send an error report.

I've tried reading around for a while, checked the FAQ on this forum and did everything it said with the DDFix, Salvage's hyperthreading imagecfg fix, and tried reinstalling/redoing it all a few times. I looked at a couple other members' problem threads here too, but I'm not really sure what to search for, so I figured it would be better to just ask. Anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I hope my card isn't too new! Thanks in advance. :)

EvaUnit02 on 30/8/2008 at 06:04

Try the "Thief: The Dark Project v1.33 Nvidia 5x.xx Driver Fix" from (http://www.thief-thecircle.com/media/patches/) this page.

1. Back up your current thief.exe.
2. Rename thieffixed.exe to thief.exe.
3. Run Salvage's dual core fix on it.

Mikoulos on 30/8/2008 at 16:47

Okay, I did everything for (http://www.thief-thecircle.com/guides/hyperthreading/) Salvage's dual core fix (hope this is what you meant) after reinstalling again, ran processor.bat as it says to, then ran thieffixed.exe (renamed Thief.exe after backing up the original exe). I still get the same problem, the menu pops up after the intro movie and crashes. Do you have any more ideas as to what the problem might be?

EDIT: What does the driver fix do, exactly? I just tried to run Everquest 2 and got a crash error...

Everquest II has detected an unrecoverable error and must shutdown.
<verify> E:\live\eq2\framework\core\devices\src\DirectX9RenderDevice.cpp (1057):
DirectX Error. (D3DERR_NOTAVAILABLE)

... was this caused by the driver fix? Not asking you to fix it, but if it is, will simply reinstalling my drivers make it work again?

EvaUnit02 on 31/8/2008 at 07:59

Quote Posted by Mikoulos

Do you have any more ideas as to what the problem might be?

I had similar problems with T1/T2 when something's messed up in the install.cfg (or in the case of T2, darkinst.cfg).

Without having direct access to your install.cfg, the best advice that I can give is to do a fresh install of the game.

Quote:

EDIT: What does the driver fix do, exactly?

(http://ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75031#texturememory)

It's a common problem with Dark engine games on Nvidia video hardware of the last few generations. T2 and SS2 have a variable command (to be placed in a config file) that bypasses it, but with T1 you have to use patched EXEs.

As for EQ2, I assure you that it wouldn't have had affected any other games.

Quote:

I just tried to run Everquest 2 and got a crash error...

Everquest II has detected an unrecoverable error and must shutdown.
<verify> E:\live\eq2\framework\core\devices\src\DirectX9RenderDevice.cpp (1057):
DirectX Error. (D3DERR_NOTAVAILABLE)

... was this caused by the driver fix? Not asking you to fix it, but if it is, will simply reinstalling my drivers make it work again?

Installing the (http://ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122611) latest version of DirectX would highly likely fix this problem.

Mikoulos on 1/9/2008 at 19:57

Okay, thanks for trying to help then. Installing DirectX again didn't fix it, but after being silly for a while, I remembered to hit that nifty "System Restore" link in my control panel. :thumb:

I guess I'll keep messing with it, see what I can do. Thanks again!