Crash after Intro sequence

Just installed this game through Stardock.
First time I start it up, watch the intro, get to title screen fine. Decide I should probably look at the manual before I start playing. Notice that the "Quit" button is faded out and doesn't respond to being clicked. Strange bug, I think, and use Alt-F4 to quit out.

Now the game crashes everytime after the intro. The Political Machine mouse cursor reappears, but the title screen doesn't reappear before I get the Windows XP Submit a Error report dialogue. The music continues to play.

Running Windows XP SP 1 (might try with SP2 later, I have nothing else to do now). AMD Athlon 1GHz, 768Mb RAM. Radeon 9100 series graphics card, with 128Mb RAM (I think; it is certainly well other 16Mb).

Going to try and get Stadock to reinstall the game now.

Here is the SmartException report; although I notice it doesn't recognise The Political Machine.


Stardock SmartException Logging Information
-------------------------------------------

OS Version : Windows XP
Video Card : RADEON 9100 SERIES
Application Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Crash Addr: 0053B1E0 01:0013A1E0 C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming.net\PolMachine\PolMachine.exe

Processor Registers (x86):
EAX:00000009
EBX:00000000
ECX:0012FE00
EDX:0A01C670
ESI:09F3786C
EDI:0000001E
CS:EIP:001B:0053B1E0
SS:ESP:0023:0012FE04 EBP:0012FE20
DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003B GS:0000
Flags:00010202


Current Application Call Stack:

Addr Frame Logical addr Module Name
---------------------------------------------
0053B1E0 0012FE20 0001:0013A1E0 C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming.net\PolMachine\PolMachine.exe
0053DD3B 0012FE2C 0001:0013CD3B C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming.net\PolMachine\PolMachine.exe
00503697 0012FE98 0001:00102697 C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming.net\PolMachine\PolMachine.exe
00659B32 0012FFC0 0001:00258B32 C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming.net\PolMachine\PolMachine.exe
77E814C7 0012FFF0 0001:000204C7 C:\WINDOWS\system32\kernel32.dll


Debug information for each stardock app follows ....

3,940 views 2 replies
Reply #1 Top
Whoops, sorry for posting so quickly without trying to fix the problem myself.
As I was reinstalling, realised I hadn't updated DirectX. After doing that the game seems to work fine (although the quit button still seems to be turned off on the menu screen. Why?)
It would be nice if the game checked if you had all the necessary updates on install, so silly mistakes like this were harder to make.
Reply #2 Top
The game keeps you from quitting until it has finished loading. What most likely happened was that you quit while it was loading and it corrupted some of the files it was bringing in. If you wait a minute or so (depending on machine speed) the button will not be grayed out and you can quit cleanly. It shouldn't take as long the second time as it caches the files from the last time.