Nothing works anymore

[Dan the Man]

Hey all,

I'm returning to Medieval II after not having played for some time and for some reason the only thing I'm able to do is play Vanilla. I have a pretty extensive mod collection that I've accumulated over the past few months, including the four Kingdoms campaigns, and I can't get any of them to run, even though Vanilla works perfectly fine. I click the icons for each of them, my cursor shows that it's trying to load, and then nothing happens. I've tried running them directly from their batch files (if available) and I've also tried running in administrator mode, all with the same results. I didn't change anything besides installing a few other mods last time I played (Lands to Conquer, Custom Campaign Mod, and Retrofit Mod), but I'm sure all of them were modfoldered so they should not have affected anything. In either case, they all worked perfectly fine the last time I played.

The only solution I can think of at the moment is to do a complete uninstall and reinstall, but that's something I'd prefer to avoid if possible. Does anybody have any better ideas? Does anybody have any idea what might have caused the problem in the first place? Really it's got me stumped.

[irishron]

Disc, Steam, or other?

Retrofit is NOT fully mod foldered. It overwrites the unit_models and unit_spries folders of vanilla and takes everything else with it.

[irishron]

Disc, Steam, or other?

Retrofit is NOT fully mod foldered. It overwrites the unit_models and unit_spries folders of vanilla and takes everything else with it.

[Dan the Man]

Disk. Okay, so I guess Retrofit must be the problem then. Is there any way to fix it without a full reinstall?

[irishron]

If there is, I have yet to find it. I learned this the hard way like you.

[Dan the Man]

Yikes. :/ Well, thanks for your help. At least now I know what I have to do.

[Dan the Man]

Okay, so I just did a clean install and deleted the entire directory for Medieval II, but the problem persists. I haven't installed any extra mods yet, but the Kingdoms campaigns still don't work. I'm going to uninstall once more before I go to bed tonight, but are there any files hidden in other parts of the system that I have to delete in order to have a truly clean install?

[irishron]

If you are using Win 7/8 or Vista, and install in the default folder, http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Store-Problems is a good candidate.

[Dan the Man]

Yep, looks like that's exactly the problem. Strangely enough the only thing in the Virtual Store folder was a copy of the Medieval II directory. I've deleted it and will start reinstalling Medieval II, then I'll follow the rest of the instructions in that thread.

Thanks again! Hopefully this time it works.

[Dan the Man]

Grrr okay so now things seem to have gotten worse. :/

I've uninstalled and reinstalled the game multiple times and gone through all of the steps involving the UAC and Virtual Store problem. Last night I installed Broken Crescent and it didn't work. Thinking it was another problem with the installation I uninstalled and reinstalled again. It wasn't until this morning when I tried to reinstall BC that I realized I had just been pointing it at the wrong directory the entire time and that I had gone through the whole process all over again for nothing.

I also realized that I had neglected to patch the game to v1.05 the first time I installed and that my game version was still at 1.04 (I'm running Gold Edition). Stainless Steel, the first mod I reinstalled after I had finished, seemed to work just fine without the patch. I didn't know how or why, but I figured it probably wouldn't last long and that it would likely start behaving erratically eventually without the right version of the game. So I uninstalled and reinstalled everything once more, and then again and again and again. Everything worked fine until I patched to v1.05, after which everything but vanilla stopped working again, with the exact same results as last time. Yes I used the Gold Edition patch, and yes I remembered to take all of the steps with fixing the UAC/Virtual Store.

Any other ideas? Is it possible for me to keep the game at v1.04 and still run mods for 1.05 with some degree of stability? Because I'm completely out of ideas to make 1.05 work.

[irishron]

Logged in as Administrator,
UAC disabled,
ownership still in place,
install in C:\Games, not Program Files (x86),
patch it,
now install mods,
and test as you go.

[Dan the Man]

I'm fairly certain that's basically what I've been doing the entire time (including changing the directory) but at this point I'm willing to try anything once. I'll report back in if something changes. Thanks!

[irishron]

Delete both Medieval II Total War folders if there still is one in the virtual store and run a good free registry cleaner before installing.

[Dan the Man]

I usually try to avoid registry cleaners, so is there a way I can do it myself? I just ran a search for 'medieval' in Reg Edit and found a few results that look promising. Is there a specific key I could/should be looking for?

[irishron]

Search for medieval, official, unofficial, kingdoms,

[Dan the Man]

I did just that and I searched for Sega too. I made sure everything was clean, I did a clean reinstall to 'Games,' and again everything worked fine. Then again as soon as I patched to 1.05 Kingdoms completely ceased to work. When I click on it the cursor spins as if it's loading for a second, then it stops and doesn't start again. Task manager shows that there's nothing even trying to run and the CD doesn't even spin in the drive.

I think that just about exhausts all of the options. It almost makes me wonder if the file I'm using for the patch is somehow corrupted. I've re-downloaded the patch several times over, so it would not be a problem on my end. I guess for now I'll see how stable everything is on 1.04. Like I said before, everything seemed to be working just fine.

[irishron]

Be sure you install the correct Gold patch. Non-gold version will do this along with a US patch on a EU/UK game.

[Dan the Man]

I'm positive it was the correct patch and it was for Gold. I guess that means there's nothing else to do.

[irishron]

Try downloading the patch from another site. I find gamershell about the best.

[Dan the Man]

Gamershell was my first try, then I tried filefront after I posted that last response. Same results.