[1.05] CTD on founding inital city

May be it's trivial but try to test your RAM with this tool: http://www.memtest.org/

The game is awfully buggy, but not THAT buggy.

Thank you for your response but memtest [easier for me to run at boot via GRUB] looks fine after 1 pass, and I really think a memory error would be a bit more [pun] random [/pun] than only when founding a city.

Is there a cut-scene or screen change when founding a city; I'm guessing it's a video issue but after updating my drivers I'm not sure what else to check.

Edit: FWIW opening cut-scene works find and "Cloth Map Only" option does not stop the CTD when founding a city.

Edit2: Any known issues with 'non-standard' install locations [ie m:\games\elemental]?

Thanks.

UPDATE: To check against a corrupted install I uninstalled [Including "My Documents\My Games\Elemental"] then did a fresh install via CD and did NOT have crashes when founding a city. Updated via Impulse to 1.05 and again the game crashes when founding a city. Any suggestions?

This is probably a brute force solution but try uninstalling and purely reinstalling from Impulse.  

When I see this:

DebugMessage:  Error parsing file C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic\screens\TacticalTrayWnd.dxscreen. Object of type StatusBar with OBJID MainUI_Spell_Bar_Mask has wrong size before parsing scripts 160 x 0

It makes me think that there's a corrupt install or something.

Thank you.

I will uninstall and install solely via impulse (and hope to play tomorrow). Curse my slow internet connection.

Thanks.

PS> Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?

An issue I've seen that people have problem with when downloading the patches is that the patch doesn't always install to the game dir, so make sure its absolutely right, otherwise you'll have loading problems, crashing, or worse. Just a suggestion.

Actually that may be a hint as I had installed to "m:\games\elemental" [and not to the "C" partition at all].

Odd that the CD version works, but not after updating to 1.05. Perhaps a hard coded file path reference somewhere in the update?

The ProgramData folder is one made by windows, it'll use that location for temporary stuff regardless where the game is installed.

i'm having the exact same issue.  i bought the game from walmart last night and installed it, ran the updates and started the campaign.  the game crashes every time i try to build the first city.  can't get past it.  the game is unplayable for me at the moment.

Please open your debug.err file in notepad, and link the contents into a post here via pastebin. This will give us some technical information that can help troubleshoot your problem.

The file can be found in My Documents\My Games\Elemental

Be sure to copy the debug immediately after the error occurs; if you start the game again, the debug log will be erased and recreated for the new session.

If there was a dump zip created in C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic on Windows XP), please post that too.

Doh! "Program Data" vs "Program Files". I must have failed my [-4:40 modified] reading comprehension roll. Sorry.

That works! Thank you!

Uninstalling and installing solely via Impulse actually lets me build a settlement.

FWIW the new downloaded version is 1.05.016 and not the 1.05.014 or even earlier version I previously upgraded with. Odd that it worked with no patches, but not after patching.

Enough of this "talk". Whatever the problem, it works now and I'm looking forward to playing. 

Thank you all.