GalCiv won't start. Help!

from Stardock Forums
I just signed up for a TotalGaming.net account yesterday. I got Stardock Central installed and configured with no problem. I was looking forword to trying GalCiv so that was the first thing I downloaded. I went ahead and downloaded the multimedia files and the AP expansion as well. I resarted my system and tried to fire up the game. The AP start menu pops up, but when I try to start a new game, I get an hourglass cursor for about 5 seconds and then nothing happens. No errors, nothing...just right back to my desktop. I looked in my task manager and there was nothing on the application tab, but on the processes tab there was an entry for galciv.exe.
I fiddled around a bit, uninstalled and redownloaded the game, this time downloading only the basic GalCiv (v 1.21.099) and tried to run it and got the exact same problem. Stardock Central reports the game is installed, but when I try to run it, I get 5 seconds of hourglass and then nothing. I reinstalled DirectX 9 as well but this had no effect either. At that point I downloaded The Corporate Machine, just to see if *anything* would work. That installed and ran without any problems.
I went to a different Windows 2000 machine, set up Stardock Central, downloaded just the basic GalCiv and got the '5 seconds of hourglass and then nothing' again. Both machines are Windows 2000 with SP4 and updated patches. My main box is an Athlon 1.8 with 1Gig of RAM and an ATI 9800 Pro. Not sure exactly what is in the 2nd box, but I'm sure it isn't identical hardware.
I'm out of ideas at this point. Any suggestions on what I should do next? Any advice would be appreciated. I'm really looking forward to trying GalCiv. :notsure:
1,443 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Have you looked at the debug.err file ine the Galciv or AP directory?
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm getting exactly the same problem on Win XP Professional with an AMD 1.9GHz, 512meg ram, DX9 and an Asus NVidia 59xx Card. No debug.err file here either.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Hmm...could be a dll problem. 

If you are comfortable using a command prompt, you can bring one up and navigate to the directory where Gal Civ is installed (the directory with the galciv exe) and then type the following command for the various dlls in the folder:

regsvr32 /u filename.ext

Once you've done that for all the dlls, register them with the same command, except for the /u,

regsvr32 filename.ext

If you're not comfortable with command prompts, click on Start->Run, and enter the commands in that box, but you'll have to use the full path, so something like this:

regsvr32 /u c:\program files\stardock\galactic civilizations\filename.ext

regsvr32 c:\program files\stardock\galactic civilizations\filename.ext

Do it for both Gal Civ and Altarian Prophecy. 

--Cari
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Have you looked at the debug.err file ine the Galciv or AP directory?
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the suggestion Cari. I'm currently on the machine that only has the basic GalCiv installed on it. I fired up a command prompt and tried to reregister the the DLLs as you suggested. There appear to be only 2 DLLs in the directory:
binkw32.dll and sdnetlib.dll

The sdnetlib.dll gave no messages when I did the /u or the the straight regsvr32 command.

The binkw32.dll however is a different story. When I try to /u it, I get the following message:
binkw32.dll was loaded, but the DLLUnregister entry point was not found.
DLLUnregister server may not be exported, or a corrupt version of binkw32.dll may be in memory. Consider using PView to detect and remove it.

Not exactly sure what this means, but it doesn't sound good. ;) It sounds like binkw32.dll is borked, but I'm not sure what I should do about it. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your help.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Maybe try just registering it? Maybe it was never registered in the first place.