ToB installation problem

Jon de Souza · Post by **Jon de Souza** » Mon Apr 08, 2002 8:07 am

As my main protagonist and Minsc were just about to reach the SoA XP cap I figured it would be a good time to install ToB and continue adventuring - especially as I'm expecting a nice hefty amount of experience for wiping out Bodhi in the next battle. I've done a full install on ToB, however, when I go to start up the game again I get the following DLL errors:
MSVCRT40.dll
MSVBVM50.dll (twice)
NIL32.dll

A bit more information just in case it makes it easier for people to help me. I haven't installed any patches apart from the bonus merchants one to get Joluv and Deirdre. I didn't uninstall SoA before trying to load ToB. I'm running Windows ME.

I'd really appreciate it if anyone could tell me what may be causing these problems and how I could go about fixing them. I hate to think that my two years of playing could be down the drain!

Thanks in advance

Jon

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Mon Apr 08, 2002 8:43 am

Originally posted by Jon de Souza
I'd really appreciate it if anyone could tell me what may be causing these problems and how I could go about fixing them. I hate to think that my two years of playing could be down the drain!

The most important thing will be to back-up all of your characters and savegames, after that it doesn't really matter what happens to the program, i would suggest you copy the folders chracters and save (also mpsave if you play multiplayer) to another directory on your machine called back-up and write them to CD or put the more important characters on disk.

You can export your player character to the characters directory, if you go to the game click on his profile and you should see a little button called "Export" use that and you should have him

Kameleon · Post by **Kameleon** » Mon Apr 08, 2002 9:06 am

After you've backed up your saves/chars I would then suggest a complete uninstall of SOA and TOB, ending in deleting the directory after you've moved everything important out(don't forget that bit

) and then reinstall cleanly. You don't even need to install the bonus merchants as they are already there with TOB I think (God, it's been so long since I played...)

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Mon Apr 08, 2002 1:17 pm

MSVCRT40.dll and MSVBVM50.dll are data libraries for Microsoft Visual C++ and Visual Basic. If the error messages you are getting are invaild page faults then something has overwritten them, or possibly Windows ME has been nice enough to restore a previous version after they've been updated (Isn't that nice of it

).

Reinstalling SOA and TOB should definitely help, but it may be worth turning off WinME's system restore first. There should be an option to do this in the system properties comptrol panel applet.

Jon de Souza · Post by **Jon de Souza** » Mon Apr 08, 2002 3:45 pm

Thanks for all the advice so far everyone.

Does Windows ME do that sort of thing then? I've uninstalled both ToB and SoA (and yes, I moved my saved games first!). When I try installing again SoA still works by itself - its just when I add ToB that I get the problems. I've checked to see if any of the available patches could be of assistance but they don't seem to be applicable.

I'm just about to try having disabled system restore so I'll let you know how that goes.

Jon

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Tue Apr 09, 2002 8:01 am

Originally posted by Jon de Souza
I've checked to see if any of the available patches could be of assistance but they don't seem to be applicable.

They don't always cover all the issues, try the latest patch with all the revisions, that might sort it out

Jon de Souza · Post by **Jon de Souza** » Thu Apr 11, 2002 4:26 am

I'm just about to try having disabled system restore so I'll let you know how that goes.

Oh woe is me. I've now tried the above and am still having the same problem with same dll files. I'm still to try installing the latest patch but will do that this evening. Although it doesn't seem to be scratched in any way, could this just be caused by a dodgy cd or do the fault messages seem to infer that there is something more wrong?

Thanks again everyone

Jon

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Thu Apr 11, 2002 4:56 am

The problem you're having is actually nothing to do with the installation of BG2, although reinstalling it should replace any damaged API files as they are needed for the game to run properly, and therefore should be included in the installation. Two of the three files you're having trouble with are from Microsoft. To be honest, I actually have no idea what NIL32.DLL does.

Have you tried downloading and installing the latest versions of the visual basic and visual c libraries? You should be able to find them int he downloads section of their site, or at most major patch/update sites (http://www.download.com comes to mind).

As for system restore, I've seen that cause lots of interesting problems. The Windows ME version of it was Microsoft's first attempt and it has gotten better in Windows XP, but for this problem you're better off without it. Basically what it does is look for file changes, so when you install something that replaces one of the files in the windows/system directory that is older than the original it has in it's file database it will restore it. Nice in theory, but if the file date stamp gets messed up bad things can happen.

BTW, what is the exact error you're getting?

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Thu Apr 11, 2002 5:27 am

Have you tried to find those files on another computer and transferring them over on Floppy disk? Also reinstall Direct X or upgrade it.

Jon de Souza · Post by **Jon de Souza** » Thu Apr 11, 2002 5:01 pm

OK - I think we're getting there. I re-installed again and then searched for the three DLL files giving the error message, which is:
Bgmain has caused an error in [whichever DLL)
Bgmain will now shut down

MSVCRT40.dll and MSVBVM50.dll both live in the Windows/System folder while NIL32.dll is in the Windows/Temp folder.

I attempted to move all three into a temporary folder. MSVBVM50 was fine and when I attempted to restart ToB I only got the error messages in MSVCRT40 and NIL32. However, MSVCRT40 would not move as it was in use. I then tried to close some of the unnecessary things I had running on the PC. These are:
Avgcc32 [AVG Control Centre]
Realplay
Zonealarm
Fsg-ag_3102 [?]
Quickdcf [Finepix Viewer]
Msmsgs [Messenger]
Atisched
Atitask
Aticwd32
Loadqm [?]
Imgicon [?]
Avgserv9
Qttask [?]

I'm not actually sure what half of these programs are!

Anyway, on closing the majority of these, I was able to move the other two DLLs. Then, I started ToB and it worked! I exited the program, moved my save game files and then tried to restart again. This time it didn't. I checked back to the two DLLs and they had both respawned and then, even though I got rid of them again I could no longer restart the game, still getting the same two error messages.

When I went to shut the computer down again I had to End Task a number of different programs called run32 (the number of run32s was the same as the number of times I tried to start ToB.
I think NIL32 may have something to do with this.

Sorry for the long message this time. I think we should get it cracked soon. You're all stars and I owe you all a beer!

Jon

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Thu Apr 11, 2002 8:59 pm

Originally posted by Jon de Souza
NIL32.dll is in the Windows/Temp folder.

That's a reason to be concerned! There shouldn't be any .dll files in the temp folder unless you're in the middle of installing something. And even then your system shouldn't be referencing them during normal operations. I also haven't been able to find any references to that file anywhere, so that may be what's causing this problem.

If you can send me a copy of it I'll see if I can pull it apart and figure out what it does. My email address is: mjbeddek@paradise.net.nz

I also find it interesting how BG2 started working after you moved the other two .dll files to somewhere else. That indicates to me that they are either the wrong vesion or have been corrupted. Unfortunately due to the large number of programs that use those libraries I would expect you to be having problems in other programs, so it doesn't quite add up.

Jon de Souza · Post by **Jon de Souza** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 12:56 pm

Mr Flibble - I've sent the file. Still having problems guys!

Jon

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 3:33 pm

I've had a good look through that dll file. It doesn't really have much information in it. What I can tell is that it was written to work on NT4, references both kernel32.dll and ntdll.dll and was done in C++. That would be why it's causing errors with MSVCRT40.dll.
The header information has almost nothing in it. The only text string in the header is:

SPeEnc loader rutine d25-06-01r by Asterios Parlamentas

If that name means anything to you, you might be able to figure out what program this belongs to. It seems to be a small custom written app, and may possibly be part of a messaging or chat program. I found a reference to the above mentioned name on a Greek BBS, but that's all.

I hope this info is of help to you. I really can't find anything else on this issue.

Jon de Souza · Post by **Jon de Souza** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 5:03 am

OK. Cheers for all the help. I had a play of ToB last night as it loaded again but now, this morning, it won't work again. Wish I'd left the PC on all night!

I've had a check and NIL32 seems to be something to do with an application called NOMOUSE.COM. It seems (and I'm not sure why I didn't notice this before) NIL32.dll isn't the only file which moves into my Temp directory when I try to load. Also in there are:
IIoad.bmp (Bitmap of the loading image)
NOMOUSE.COM
Shortcut to NOMOUSE.COM
NOMOUSE.SP (Don't know what a .SP is)
SPEEnc.Dup

I can't think of anything I did differently to actually get the game to work last night, but I'm still trying!

Jon

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 4:18 pm

Originally posted by Jon de Souza
IIoad.bmp (Bitmap of the loading image)
NOMOUSE.COM
Shortcut to NOMOUSE.COM
NOMOUSE.SP (Don't know what a .SP is)
SPEEnc.Dup

Sounds incredibly suspicious to me, have you virus scanned etc?

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 4:44 pm

Originally posted by Mr Sleep

Sounds incredibly suspicious to me, have you virus scanned etc?

I agree. Having a few files in the temp directory is one thing, but an entire program?!

I know AVG to be a reasonably good virus scanner, so I recommend updating it as much as possible and doing a full scan of your machine.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 6:42 am

Also check autoexec and startup to see if there are any entries that either have load= or something like that.

Also do you have any registry editing experience?

Jon de Souza · Post by **Jon de Souza** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 7:11 am

I did a full scan as soon as this happened the first time so I'm quite confident that I'm virus free.

I'm afraid I don't have any experience of registry editing. How would I do that?

Cheers

Jon

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 7:16 am

Originally posted by Jon de Souza
I did a full scan as soon as this happened the first time so I'm quite confident that I'm virus free.

I'm afraid I don't have any experience of registry editing. How would I do that?

Cheers

Jon

I was going to ask you to check some commonly used keys for viruses, you can usually see some little trojans in reg if one knows where they are looking.

I don't actually have time at the moment; i should be working, i will look at it when i get home

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 2:01 pm

Actually the easiest way to do check what's happening on startup is with a program called msconfig. You can get to it from the run option on the start menu. This will show you everything that is being run from autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini, system.ini and the registry 'run' and 'runservice' sections. Deactivating commands is as simple as removing a tick from a selection box, so you can go through all the startup files and take out what you don't want. If you find anything to do with that nomouse program, just un-tick it and restart.