Neverending Patching and CTD on Startup Screen - Please Help

[LastSoutherner]

Hello one and all,

I have been a devoted Strategy Gamer and player of the Total War series since Rome and Medieval 1. While I have enjoyed all Total War Games (And even Shogun 2 in the rare moments I can make it playable). However, I have been trying for a week and I cannot get this bug solved or worked around, nor have I seen any solution anywhere (although there are others who have had the same problem). I have installed Shogun 2 on my new PC which runs Winsows 7 64bit. It worked great, even brilliantly, for 2 days and I enthusiatically proceded to buy FOTS. However, then the troubles began. I should mention that Steam takes an inordinately and inexplicably long time to Download anything related to Shogun for reasons unknown (Shogun 2 is the only game that has this problem) After I installed FOTS the problems slowly began to escalate until I decided to try to reinstall the game (Which took 15 hours due to Steam constantly pausing in the midle of the download) After that it worked again for a few hours but by the next morning It began CTD during my campaign game when battles were won. I restarted and the game wouldnt make it past the startup screen where it would stop working before the intro cutscene. I tried to validate the game files, at which point it said 41 files failed to validate and downloaded an update (Which took ~6 hours) however, now everytime I try to start it either stops working on the startup screen or proceeds to download another update (Which takes anywhere from 1-6 hours). This process has repeated itself on-and-off for days. At times I can get the game to work for a few hours but only that. I have tried everything I can think of, all my drivers are updated, I reinstalled the game from disk, I reinstalled the game from Steam, etc.

BTW: If i try to validate the files now it tells me that all files are succesfully validated and then proceeds to download an update anyway. Which despite my internet speed being 2-4 MB/s takes the previously mentioned 1-6 hours.

Here id my DxDiag

[irishron]

Your internet speed is stillway better than mine. This game has taken on a different life fater FotS release.

Have you tried deleting the scripts folder before verifying the game cache?

New pcs being what they are, post your dxdiag.