improving medieval 2 tw and kingdoms performance

[danny X]

I have been doing some light modding on the vanilla campaign, so i was exiting and re-entering the game on a regular basis.

The problem is after exiting the game and then re-entering, i was getting some serious performance issues, after the first loading screen the game would virtually stop, it would just be a blank black screen! When exiting the game you could still here the med 2 tw intro music. It was the same when i tried to load some mods i had installed and the same with the kingdoms expansions. So obviously something needed to be done..........

I've spent the last 24hrs installing and un-installing everything to do with these games four times! Including patches and mods, un-installing absolutely everything manually and running a cleaner.

Three times with the boxed versions and lastly through steam (just incase it was a damaged disc).

But the problem persisted.

I've searched various forums for an answer and was suprised to find very little about the situation on this forum, although there have been similar incidences on other forums, but very little information about fixing the issues!

What i've found is that two .exe's are conflicting in the background, medieval2.exe and launcher.exe. With the latter (launcher.exe) being very cpu intensive! The launcher.exe is also the cause of the problem, as it doesn't shut down after its not needed anymore.

If you are experiencing any problem like this, i have tried various things, but found only one solution.

The solution is to turn the launcher.exe off, you can't delete it because it is needed! The way to turn it off is to open Windows Task Manager, select 'Processes', highlight 'launcher.exe' and then 'End Process'.
I now do this everytime i open the game, alas performance has totaly improved!

If you look through the list, when you select 'Processes', you will see medieval2.exe and launcher.exe, so obviously medieval2.exe is what is needed to run the game. I have done this method alot of times now today and i have encountered no problems whatsoever!

Im assuming this must be quite widespread, so any input from Irishron and any other mods about this problem would be greatly appreciated!

[irishron]

If you are using the dvd version, in the icon, replace launcher.exe with medieval2.exe and end of problem. If you're using Steam, there is no way around the launcher. It's been known since release of 1.2.

If you're using Vista or Win 7, disabling the UAC and using a mod folder also helps, believe it or not.