Unable to play after new patch - Hangs at Validating

[TheSquirrelly]

Well, after struggling for nearly a week to get DDO fully downloaded and working, I did have it for part of a whole day. Then the new patch came out.

I opened DDO up, and it went to the TDM, which shortly went to creating/validating 4.73 GB of 5.00 GB (which was more than the 4.8 something I had before, so I thought great, it's getting the new update). But then it just hung there forever.

Stopped it, waited, started it again. Same thing. Well okay, I had that before, when I thought I was running the full download, but turned out I wasn't because it was stuck validating then too. Uninstalled TDM, reinstalled, and ran it. It downloaded another update to the TDM and restarted itself. And it did do like before, doing a repair and then taking 20 minutes scanning/validating the full 4.73 GB over again, and then... nothing. For literally hours. Never went up, or changed. No error messages.

Uninstalled, downloaded TDM fresh from the site (in case that had been updated too), reinstalled, ran again. Same. 20 minutes, 4.73 GB verified, and stall.

Looked for help here. Most everyone is talking about Vista/7 problems and running as admin. I'm on XP, logged in as admin already, and the problem doesn't really match the other descriptions.

However, did go through a number of fixes suggested. Tried running the TurbineRegisterGDF.exe, which just made it worse (after that I then get "System.EntryPointNotFoundException: Unable to find an entry point named VerifyAccess in DLL GameuxInstallHelper.dll. [etc.]").

Uninstalled TDM, reinstalled. Works until the 4.73 GB again. Tried the manual steps for TurbineRegisterGDF.exe, end up with the same errors again.

Uninstalled TDM, reinstall, another 20 minutes waiting for it to verify up to 4.73 GB.

Also tried finding the files in the 'Backup' folder to replace possible corrupt ones (as suggested as another possible issue), but looks like mine hasn't gotten to that point, as my Backup folder has all of two logo images buried in a couple of folders.

I'm running Win XP, logged in as admin. Originally tried installing DDO with TDM, then had to use Pando to get it, then reinstalled TDM to finish it. Was finally working great on Tue before the update. My TDM is running with P2P off (my previous uses with it on were unsuccessful).

Right now, the only things I can think of I didn't try are turning P2P on again, and totally uninstalling everything and downloading from scratch with Pando again.

Let me try the P2P right now, since don't have much to lose.. Also changed ports, just in case, though looks like it does a random one with each install, so probably not an issue.

Well doing that, now it's re-verifying, again. So another 20 minutes waiting.

And so at this point it's past bed time, and I've spent my entire day since I got home from work, struggling once again with trying to get this working. I've spent much more time fighting the game itself, than fighting things in the game.

And yet again it's gotten to 4.73 GB and stalled, still saying it's creating/validating.

What can I do from here?

I really need to go to bed now, but will leave it running over night. Tomorrow after work I'll try rebooting all my equipment, and see if that helps. But if anyone has any other help, let me know! Or if need any other info. Thanks!

[TheSquirrelly]

Working once more! Unfortunately I can't give a clear answer of what fixed it, as I was doing all sorts of things. Restarted cable modem and router, rebooted computer, later got a weird explorer error (the windows program, not IE) when trying to "exit" a stalled TDM, rebooted again.. Was running a new copy of Pando to get a new fresh copy of the game, and was literally moments away from fully uninstalling and waiting for Pando to finish downloading, just waiting for TDM to stall at 4.73 GB again, when I noticed it finally passed that point, and finished! It then downloaded some more files, and I'm now back in!

I'm really glad it's fixed. Would love to know why, but I guess it's one of those gift horse things. :-)

[lscotte]

Same problem here... Restarted the thing several times, rebooted, nothing gets past it for me. I submitted a support ticket over 24 hours ago, but they never responded... I guess I just don't play this game anymore? *sigh* I am NOT going to D/L 4 GB or whatever and try uninstall/reinstall - too much effort and takes too long to download.

[UPDATE: I seem to have gotten past this by turning peer-to-peer on and off and on and off until it finally worked. Something is broken here! Thanks TheSquirrelly for the hint on peer-to-peer].

[TheSquirrelly]

Quite welcome if any of that helped! Yeah that might have been part of it here too, as I had switched it different ways as well. I love playing what I've been able to of the game so far, and wouldn't have made half the effort I did if I hadn't. But yeah, it sure can be frustrating! A game shouldn't require that much work just to download and install. Good luck and have fun playing!

[mogman]

DDO hangs up at the "Your Adventure Starts Now! Creating / Validating" screen for me as well. It begins validation, but never exceeds 300.99MB of 5.00GB.

As suggested in other posts, I attempted to turn P2P on and off. I had no success after several attempts to log on in either setting. Also tried pausing, restarting, resetting routers, rebooting...etc. with no luck.

I followed the advice in this post:
http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=2697112&postcount=3

Tried running TurbineRegisterGDF.exe
no response

Tried to manually perform the functions of the TurbineRegisterGDF.exe program by typing the following in a Command Prompt:

CD “C:\Program Files\Turbine\Dungeons and Dragons Online – Eberron Unlimited”
(note: The instructions as listed in the post didn't work. I had to replace the "&" with the word "and", and I had to replace the word "Stormreach" with "Eberron Unlimited")

then:
Regsvr32 PatchWrapper.dll (I got a success message)

then:
Regsvr32 PatchwrapperPS.dll (another success message followed)

Tried launching the game again with no success. Also tried running game through TurbineInvoker.exe, dndlauncher.exe, dndclient.exe, and TurbineLauncher.exe. No Joy.

I have not contacted official tech support yet as I was hoping to exhaust all attempts to correct the problem on my own. Any help would be appreciated.

[TheSquirrelly]

Heya! Yeah that's one of the same posts I went through the steps for too.

About the one thing you don't mention trying, is exiting out of TDM entirely (use the 'stop' option), then go to add/remove or uninstall programs and uninstall the TDM. Then reinstall the TDM new. It won't uninstall the game itself. Then when you run it again, it'll force it to do a 'repair' and then revalidate again. If you're lucky, that'll get you past the stuck spot!

That seems to be a common issue, at least for me, as it's happened each time I've installed or updated, but I don't see much in answers for it on the forum, other than reinstalling TDM.

All else fails, may need to try the full reinstall with Pando, that I managed to avoid this last time. Well barring others that may have suggestions.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

[mogman]

Heya! Yeah that's one of the same posts I went through the steps for too.

About the one thing you don't mention trying, is exiting out of TDM entirely (use the 'stop' option), then go to add/remove or uninstall programs and uninstall the TDM. Then reinstall the TDM new. It won't uninstall the game itself. Then when you run it again, it'll force it to do a 'repair' and then revalidate again. If you're lucky, that'll get you past the stuck spot!



I submitted a tech help ticket and got a response within hours. They requested more information and I sent it to them which got me back in the help queue. No response so far, but that was late Friday.

It may end up being a matter of re-installing TDM as you suggested. I'll post the fix as soon as I get it.

[Carat]

You probably don't want to hear my result, but I tried the TDM method and the reinstall from old upload. Both worked for a bit then failed on the 2nd time in. http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=228968

After my last try didn't work even with making sure all my drivers, etc were up to date, I completely uninstalled everything related to Turbine, cleared out the DDO download folder and redownloaded a fresh install directly (without the TDM assistant).

This worked and now I am going well in the game. Extremely long process but something you may have to undertake. Best of luck.

[mogman]

You probably don't want to hear my result, but I tried the TDM method and the reinstall from old upload. Both worked for a bit then failed on the 2nd time in. http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=228968

After my last try didn't work even with making sure all my drivers, etc were up to date, I completely uninstalled everything related to Turbine, cleared out the DDO download folder and redownloaded a fresh install directly (without the TDM assistant).

This worked and now I am going well in the game. Extremely long process but something you may have to undertake. Best of luck.

Well the official "fix" came in from Turbine this afternoon. It consisted of bringing up msconfig (Win XP) and shutting down all non Microsoft programs at startup. Unfortunately that made it worse. I couldn't get the Turbine downloader to start up at all, and of course it shut down my wireless card.

After fiddling around with the settings for an hour or so, I made the decision to completely remove DDO / Turbine from my hard drive and do a full (non tiered) re-install. Everything seems to be working fine so far.

Even though their advice didn't eliminate the problem, their instructions were very clear, and the response time was sooner than expected. Kudos to them.

[TheSquirrelly]

Thanks, mogman and Carat, for the followups. Yeah, uninstalling and then reinstalling with pando instead of TDM seems to be what it often comes down to (even though I lucked out just before having to do that too). As long as you have a half decent connection, the time just waiting for a complete download will be much less than the time struggling to get it to work otherwise.

And yes, my tech response was much quicker than the 2 weeks I was expecting, too, which was nice. It wasn't the answer to the question I asked, but was the answer to the problem I was having by the time I got the answer, so it all worked out. :-)

[Darkadia]

Well, after a few weeks of doing other stuff, I tried to log on to DDO. It went through one round of updating then restarted and started to hang at validating.

What I did was this.. deleted the shortcut on the desktop, then created a new one from the 'TurbineLauncher' app. Running that seems to have done the trick. It went through the examining and updating of game data (doing so now). I'll post if this failed to work.. if it works I'll be in world ;D