Medieval Total War: Runtime Error: Crash

[gwillybj]

My PC is only 4 months old: HP Pavilion a1520n, WinXP Media Center Ed (not by choice, would have preferred Home), Athlon64X2, a bunch of other up-to-date bells and whistles.

I bought Medieval Total War Gold Edition (includes Viking Invasion) at EBGames. Before I installed it I shut down all those annoying little optional programs that run in the background, and I disabled Norton Antivirus. Then I installed MTW exactly as instructed. Everything went smoothly through all three CDs, although a curious thing is that it never asked for the CD key, which is printed on a blue card in the box.

Anyhew, everything seemed okay so I launched MTW, got the Total War logo, then a "boop" and a crash to the desktop with the following message box:

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library

Runtime Error!

Program: ...mbly\Medieval - Total War - Gold
Edition\Medieval_TW.exe

R6025
-pure virtual function call

Any ideas?

[Harovan]

The error message points to a pretty common programming error. You found a bug. Likely not your or your computers fault.

[gwillybj]

I found out by chance that there is a version 2.01 patch specifically for the Gold Edition. So I downloaded and installed it. But I get the same exact results : MTW logo, "boop", crash, Visual Basic error message. I'm sending a message to their Customer Support. While I wait for their response, I'll be playing SMAX (SP), even though I have

• Galactic Civilizations - Ultimate Edition,
• Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday,
• Master of Orion 3, and
• Space Empires IV Deluxe,

among others. For some reason I just can't get into them like I get into SMAX.

[Proteus_MST]

I don´t have the Gold edition,
only the normal edition (including the addon which isn´t instaled because it always checks for the 1.2 gigs free space on partition c although the free space is needed on another patition where it should be installed) but this one works versy well with my compi and Win XP.

Have you already looked into TW-Forums?

[gwillybj]

Yes, I forgot to mention that I kept getting an error 404 - Page Not Found whenever I clicked on the TW forum link, so I gave up.
I just now went to check it again and there is a news item on the MTW main page that the forums are down and they are working to get them back.

[Grandpa Troll]

Well, I spent multiple days trying to get mine to work and eventually unchecked "Install direct X 9" in install screen.

Works like a champ now

Gramps

[gwillybj]

Here I am again... I found another interesting tidbit. In the main MTW folder is a little file called "error.log" which I couldn't keep from looking into. Guess what's in it? An entry for every time I tried to run MTW and here's what they all say:

E:\Mtw_atvi\main3d_1.cpp(7115) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST

I ran dxdiag and it reported no problems anywhere. The DX version is 9.0c. I'll probably end up having to send this info to the Customer Service folks, but for now I'll wait for their reply to my original message about the Runtime Error, although that and this DX error likely go hand-in-hand.

[snoopy369]

Perhaps try installing DX from another game (like Civ!) and then try installing M:TW without installing DX9 (like GT did)?

[gwillybj]

DX9.0c was already on my PC so, yes, I did skip that step of the installation.
The official TW forum is back up, and, having reading a few threads there, I have a feeling there's an incompatibility with my nVidia GeForce 6150LE drivers. I hate to think I have to go get older drivers just to play MTW when everything else on my PC is running great.
I can't return the game to EBGames to exchange it for something else because it's open and nothing is wrong with it - except that it doesn't want to play on my PC.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I'ld definately try a re-install and be absolutely sure to uncheck that DX install box. Yes, it would 'skip' that step if you already have DX9, but just to be sure, uncheck the box so the game doesn't even try to check. Couldn't hurt anything.

I seem to recall this being a situation with the old Shogun game as well.

[gwillybj]

Thanks, everyone, for your helpful suggestions. Unfortunately, MTW is still a no-go. It's not important enough to spend any more time on, as I have plenty of other games to play, as listed above. I guess I'll see what I can get for it on eBay.

[Proteus_MST]

Just try RTW Gold instead (if you haven´t played it yet)
which you should get for around 15-20 Euro, too.

It is better than MTW 1 (people at the Total war forums said, if you played RTW you most likely won´t return to MTW 1 and this seems to be true)
and even has most of the features of MTW 2 without most of the bugs MTW 2 has at the moment

[Cyclotron]

I second what Proteus said. I had problems with MTW on my current computer; I had to roll back my video driver to get it to load. Eventually I figured out some obscure video setting that would enable it to run without shafting the rest of my programs, but I forgot exactly what that kludge was a long time ago.