Some really strange bugs... please help

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I posted this on the BioWare boards, but I haven't got any replies... maybe you guys can help out.

Last summer (yes, I was extremely bored and I decided to go through BG again), I reinstalled Baldur's Gate : The Original Saga (I did recommanded install), and everything worked fine. I finished the game, exported in BG2 and all.

Last week, I decided to go through the game for an Xth time (you can never get sick of BG ). I swapped the 2nd (or 3rd? I don't remember) CD in my drive, and when I start a new game, it crashes and says :

An assertion failed in DBGSourceUpdate_TOTSC \dev\Baldur\CGameEffect.cpp at line number 1122

I'm not a computer freak, so I don't know what the heck that means.

My first reflex was to uninstall and then reinstall the game. Uninstalling worked fine.

I decided to do a full install this time. That way, if the game still didn't work, I might be able to use the BG1:tutu stuff. Unfortunatly, my cpu doesn't seem to be able to do the full install (cannot uncompress everything, the readme says it's normal on some systems). I aborded and started again.

When I reinstalled (recommended), it told me that the uninstal file was corrupted and I may not be able to uninstall the game again. Great. I proceeded with the installation, and when I try to start a new game, I still get the weird message (above). What is strange is that if I load up the only save game (the one that comes with TotSC by default), the game actually works.

Now, I'm just out of ideas. I'm stuck with something that doesn't work, and I can't uninstall it either (it says the file is corrupted).

I know it's not my cpu, since it worked fine last summer. I'm 99.9% sure it's not my CDs either, since they never leaved their cases since I was done with the game (and the cases weren't exposed to any kind of excessive temperature, if you must know).

Thanks to anybody who has read the post to the end, and I would be grateful for any help! (I can post my cpu's specs, though I don't think that would be useful for the reasons I told above). Thx again!

 

Format C?

[Don't bother posting such stupid suggestios. Really.] -Tal

[ February 12, 2004, 13:36: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

I hate to answer this because I'm not a computer geek...

You are using windows right?

It should be stored at: CProgram Files\Black Isle

Go there and manually delete the Baldur's Gate folder.
Sometimes when you uninstall stuff some garbage gets left behind and it prevents reinstalling.

Make sure there are no saved games or anything else you want to save in there first. But if your files where corupted then you probably shouldn't save any saved games or characters.

Again please note I'm not any kind of expert on this!

 

Have you tried patching?

 

There is not too high chance for my suspicion, but let me tell it anyway:
Bad(irrelevant) registry entries may also cause such problems. It happens sometimes that some bad entries remain there and only the user can remove them, manually.
This can be very awful work if there are too many such entries, so you can use a Registry Cleaner program (Norton Systemworks contains such option in one of its sub-programs, cannot recall its name now). Their effectiveness is far from 100% though.

If you still encounter those problems after trying everything: Format C was a bit strong, but a Windows reinstall isn't. It will clean the registry.

In the worst case, even the hard drive's bad sectors may cause the problems. This can happen in case of old(er) PCs.

 

I had a problem like this with my Icewind Dale II. An issue occurred with installation that wasn't cleared with uninstallation. I did end up having to use a Registry Cleaner program that I got off the front of some PC magazine to clear up the corrupted items in my Registry. That was a very risky move, though, because I didn't really know what I was doing and I could have stuffed up my whole PC. But I just deleted everything from my Registry that seemed to relate to Black Isle, then re-installed and then it worked fine.

But don't go playing with your registry unless you have a good backup of your system and can restore easily.

 

Run regedit (Windows Registry Editor) and there is a menupoint called Export Registry. You can make a backup of your registry file with that. Of course this doesn't mean that you can play with your registry now, because the system data aren't stored only in registry. Unless you know what you're doing, I don't advise manually editing/deleting in registry either (but feel free to make a backup of your registry using the method written above).

 

Thx for the replies guys.

I've checked Tal's links, and I'll try what they suggest there.

Again, thx to anyone who helped

 

What about those that took a look at this thread, did want to help but had no answer? Oh I feel so useless

 

Alright then, thx to anyone who read the post

I deleted the files in cache/data, as interplay suggested it. Now, I have an all new (yipee!) assertion error when I try to start the game (I can't get to menu).

I would try to reinstall another time, but since I can't use the "uninstall" button, is it fine if I just delete the BG1 folder of Program Files?

 

EDIT: Aargh. I had posted what I thought was the solution to your problem, only to realize it was for BG2.

Perhaps this will help instead?

[ February 13, 2004, 04:06: Message edited by: CamDawg ]