Dawn of War won't even start!

[Gavin]

I got this game the other day and it won't start for me at all. Have defregged disc and reinstalled, still nothing. There appear to be no warnings.txt or diagdx files at all. All I get is the following message in a dialog box:

Runtime Error!

Program C:\Program Files\THQ\W40k.exe

abnormal program termination

The other thing that happens is that my mouse pointer turns into the spinning cd pointer until I reset - that's as much of this great game I've experienced.

Like I said, I've searched for the warnings and diagdx files but not a sausage, unless they are hidden or called something else these days. I've done a search on the forums for similar problems but I only saw one that seemed to have the same problem and that seemed to be resolved by a pm.

I'd appreciate any help!

Gav.

[Deacon412]

corupt data??? umm in not to smart here what i would do is uninstall it, if you cant do that i would defrag my comp then id uninstall it

[Stalwart Jester]

Hm...what are the specs of your computer? Maybe that has something to do with it, if it's too old or something. But if it should be able to handle it, I'm stumped. Those runtime error things were always the bane of my old computer. I never got to fix many of those problems...

[ZombieSpiderman]

I had a problem similar to this with an older version of WA and I tracked it back to being a problem with CD verification. The spinning CD icon suggests to me that you may be having the same problem. My suggestion is that you get the latest patch since that does away with the CD verification process (something I suspect is a tacit acknowledgement of a bug by Relic). If you're already running the latest version, then I don't know what to tell you.

[Gavin]

Guys, thanks for the contributions so far. Just to eliminate ropey old pc as a possible answer, the pc is a brand new Core 2 Duo Dell, 2 Gigs of ram, 7900GS video card, X-fi sound card- well above necessary spec.

Of course, I should also mention that I am using the Game of the Year version of the game.

[t0xlc]

Have you got DX 9 installed?
Is the Video Card Settings right?
Are the DX Settings right?

And if it doesnt work Pray To The Emporer

["moo"]

well you should definitely be able to run it with those specs.....but do you have direct X 9.0c installed?

[Niuq Oteen]

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=104486
Click direct download
Download and save the patches, i like to stack em all in one folder.
Corrupt data can be an issue when using the patches with open instead of save.
Usually has to do with packet loss not your system specs.

Cd verification problems fix can be found here.
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=105552

When installing patches use this first
All Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War Patches Archive to 1.41

If you use the seperate links for early patches can run into version problems for GotY edition. Happened to my brother when he bought the game.



Hope this helps if above suggestions didnt work for you.

Figure out which version your on, and install all the patches to bring you up to 1.51

[Adonis]

People, before clicking on the "New Thread" icon, please look up 1 inch on your screen and click on "Dawn of War Technical Assistance".

[Moe]

Patch the game to version 1.51. THQ removed the CD check from the game, let's see if that helps you.

[Gavin]

Hi Adonis - as I state in my first message, "I've done a search on the forums for similar problems but I only saw one that seemed to have the same problem and that seemed to be resolved by a pm." It says on the Tech Problems board to post on the main board if your problem isn't resolved there - believe me, if you pointed me to a solution on the Tech Board I'd be delighted!

I'd be interested in trying a patch (assuming the patches are not already implemented in the Game of the Year edition) but I had a look at the Dawn of War website and couldn't find them - 'Downloads' would be the obvious place for them I would have thought.

Can anyone point me towards the patch mentioned above?

Thanks again,
Gavin.

I did a google for the patch and found it no problem once I had the '1.51' in the query. Unfortunately I checked my existing .exe version and it's 1.4.0.0, so I've to download the other patches first I guess!

Back to playing X-COM again for a while...

[Gavin]

Just in case anyone has a similar problem, I'll just tell you that I patched the game to 1.41 and got nothing, then to 1.5 and the game was fixed.

Thanks to all who offered help.