[Objekt]

    
Posted: Sat Feb 17 2007, 03:15PM
A year or so ago, I had Freespace 2 SCP version 3.6.7 installed. Everything worked, and I had even played a number of "aftermarket" campaigns.

Now it's a couple of system reinstalls later, and I got the notion to see what SCP was up to. Last night, I downloaded and ran the latest, greatest Uber-installer, flush with its promise to automatically detect what files I needed, and download latest version of same. So I let it run overnight.

At the tail end, it asked about OpenAL. I wasn't sure whether I had it, so I downloaded & installed it. Then restarted.

Thing is, it doesn't freakin' work. Launcher crashes every time I run it. Here's the error signature:

AppName: launcher.exe AppVer: 5.5.0.0 ModName: launcher.exe
ModVer: 5.5.0.0 Offset: 0000e67e

Not very useful, but it was all I could get from the Windows error message thingy.

What gives?

I installed on top of a fresh install of plain old Freespace 2, which was working fine. Here's all the version info stuff:
SCP version 3.6.9
Windows XP Pro, SP2
PC is an Athlon 3200 with 1 GB RAM, Abit NF7-S 2.0 mobo
Video card is a Powercolor Radeon 9700 Pro w/128 MB
Sound is a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS

Stupid thing doesn't work.

Some additional info: I've found two versions of the OpenAL installer, one with filename "OpenALwEAX.exe" and the other simply "oalinst.exe."  The former doesn't work; it insists I need to update my nVidia drivers before it will run.

Thing about that is, my motherboard has built-in nVidia MCP audio, but I don't use it.  When I installed the SoundBlaster, there was no more reason to use it, so I disabled it in Windows Device Manager.

"oalinst.exe" says some OpenAL files are "in use" (not sure how that's possible) and that I need to reboot for it to take effect.  As I said, I did that already, but the Launcher still crashes.

[Wanderer]

Hmm... Try this one: http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/Launcher55a.rar

[Objekt]

Hmm... Try this one: http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/Launcher55a.rar

Nope, that also crashes every time.

FWIW, I found the old launcher that came with SCP 3.6.7, version 5.3.  It works!  Am I missing anything by using Launcher 5.3 instead of something more recent?

I still have one problem.  When I do run the game, I get a dialog box insisting I upgrade to Open AL 1.1.  Well, I can't.  I downloaded the file (oalinst.exe) from the Open AL website, but when I run it, it claims some Open AL files are "in use" and that I must reboot to complete installation.  Even if I reboot, it obviously isn't completing installation, because I get that message when I try to run SCP.

I also get no sound whatosever, I guess because Open AL isn't working.

[jr2]

Try doing a fresh install using this
(Go Turey!!  )
.. I would rename your old install's directory, so you can go back to it if the new install fails.

[karajorma]

I suspect that is what he used in the first place.

Go to Windows\System 32\ and check for either ct_oal.dll or nvopenal.dll. Delete them if you find them then try installing the more recent version of OpenAL.

[Objekt]

I suspect that is what he used in the first place.

Go to Windows\System 32\ and check for either ct_oal.dll or nvopenal.dll. Delete them if you find them then try installing the more recent version of OpenAL.

Unfortunately, that didn't work either.  The OpenAL installer still insists an (unnamed) OpenAL file is "in use" and thus refuses to install. 

Yes, I started by using the uber-installer over a fresh FS2 commercial install.  All the same, I'm in the middle of a re-reinstall, cleaning up a few things (such as my Java Runtime Environment version).  Maybe it will make a difference.

This is what I'm doing:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,45496.msg926911.html#msg926911



I even tried doing it in Safe Mode.  Same deal.

[Scuddie]

Have you tried deleting the launcher6.ini file?

[Objekt]

Have you tried deleting the launcher6.ini file?

Okay, I did it.  Launcher er...launches, now, but when I browse to the 3.6.9 release .exe (fs2_open_3_6_9.exe) and hit OK, Launcher promptly crashes. 

Of course, if I don't do that, I can't run the game.

[karajorma]

Sounds to me like you have a corrupted openAL install. You could try removing OpenAL in safe mode. Someone else whill need to tell you which DLLs to remove as I can't remember off the top of my head.

[jr2]

...what about the openal .dll's in the prefetch directory?  I remember I had to do something of this sort once, I found the files OpenAl used and searched for other files of the same name... found them in all sorts of places, prefetch, and somewhere else, too, besides system32.  I use PowerDesk free edition's File Finder (works like 10x faster than windows file search).  Version 6 is out, I use version 5... not sure if there's any difference performance-wise.  The util was called "pd5free.exe" and it's by VCOM.

[jr2]

Umm, take a looky here (link to a link, I know : ), see if this fixes it:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,45515.msg927286.html#msg927286