Thumbed_Servant
07-18-2014, 10:05 PM
Hello. I had troubles getting the patch Update 22.2 downloaded to my computer. I was effectively without DDO for 2 days :(
I am posting my experience that it might be of help to anyone else having similar issues now or in the future.
I play on an older HP Laptop running Windows 7 Home. I had 2 copies of the game on my machine.
First Problem My game launchers stuck at "Installing Prereqs". It seemed they could not connect to the DDO servers to download the patch. I went through the firewall and antivirus controls to mark any and every program labeled ddo or Turbine as *Allowed* or *Full Access*. Still no luck. I stopped my antivirus for 5 minutes and set my firewall, Zonealarm, to *snooze* for 5 minutes. Still no luck connecting to DDO servers. I called customer service, got a friendly and helpful fellow on the phone, tried his suggestions, no luck, so he posted a ticket on my behalf to Turbine Technical Support. I was very satisfied with the phone call, even if it did not resolve the game issue (Shout out to operator Jason: Thanks for a professional and pleasant customer call experience.) I even put in a forum private mail to Turbine staff who offered helpful suggestions...mainly that it seemed a firewall issue.
The RESOLUTION: It WAS my firewall. Zonealarm has a Game Mode. The Game Mode can be set to deny ALL requests for inbound/outbound communications without notice to the user. It is supposed to shut off Game Mode when the Game Mode Window is closed. When I opened the Game Mode window I found it still set to Deny. Once I manually turned off the Game Mode my game was able to connect to the DDO servers and commence the patch download.
Second Problem Once the game had downloaded the patch I tried to launch. I could enter my user name and password, get the game world list, select a game world, and then...launcher crash and error code 201. This is the inability of the game to read .dat files or missing .dat files. I researched some on the forums, didn't find anything about this in current postings but did wind up on the Turbine Knowledge Base. They have a decent article with suggestions on different reasons for and solutions for this error. I spent 12 hours working on these suggestions as I did clean uninstalls (see instructions here: http://support.turbine.com/link/portal/24001/24001/Article/3052/What-s-the-best-way-to-reinstall-LOTRO-or-DDO) of both copies of the game, downloaded and installed several times (including a final download and install of the High Definition version which is MUCH larger and time consuming to download) and kept having the same issues. I went into the game folders and copied the files from the backup folder to the main and reinstalling the patch, still no luck. I tried doing these things with firewall off and antivirus off. I opened my Windows downloads folder and deleted the game downloads from it so that I could get a complete download from there servers and not a reinstall of the same file I'd already downloaded in case it was corrupted. Finally I was at the last suggestion from the knowledge base, the last thing I would try before I filed a new ticket to Tech Support for this current trouble.
The RESOLUTION: Setting my User Account Control from the Default to it's lowest setting,Never notify (for Windows 7 it seems this is the way to turn it off). Then when I opened the game, which had seemingly already patched, the launcher started downloading more files. From this I conjecture that some of the files were being blocked by the User Account Control without giving me any notice all the times I had been opening the game after Patch 22.1. Instructions for making adjustments to the User Account Control can be found here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-user-account-control-on-off#1TC=windows-7
NOTE If you use this solution you should by all means reset your User Account Control to it's Nominal/Default position after the game finishes the patch to maintain your computers security.
I had never ever had this trouble before. I have no idea if this was due to changes in the game programming or recent Windows changes. I know it happened, and I now know the solution. I hope this might save someone else some frustration and time.
Cheers
I am posting my experience that it might be of help to anyone else having similar issues now or in the future.
I play on an older HP Laptop running Windows 7 Home. I had 2 copies of the game on my machine.
First Problem My game launchers stuck at "Installing Prereqs". It seemed they could not connect to the DDO servers to download the patch. I went through the firewall and antivirus controls to mark any and every program labeled ddo or Turbine as *Allowed* or *Full Access*. Still no luck. I stopped my antivirus for 5 minutes and set my firewall, Zonealarm, to *snooze* for 5 minutes. Still no luck connecting to DDO servers. I called customer service, got a friendly and helpful fellow on the phone, tried his suggestions, no luck, so he posted a ticket on my behalf to Turbine Technical Support. I was very satisfied with the phone call, even if it did not resolve the game issue (Shout out to operator Jason: Thanks for a professional and pleasant customer call experience.) I even put in a forum private mail to Turbine staff who offered helpful suggestions...mainly that it seemed a firewall issue.
The RESOLUTION: It WAS my firewall. Zonealarm has a Game Mode. The Game Mode can be set to deny ALL requests for inbound/outbound communications without notice to the user. It is supposed to shut off Game Mode when the Game Mode Window is closed. When I opened the Game Mode window I found it still set to Deny. Once I manually turned off the Game Mode my game was able to connect to the DDO servers and commence the patch download.
Second Problem Once the game had downloaded the patch I tried to launch. I could enter my user name and password, get the game world list, select a game world, and then...launcher crash and error code 201. This is the inability of the game to read .dat files or missing .dat files. I researched some on the forums, didn't find anything about this in current postings but did wind up on the Turbine Knowledge Base. They have a decent article with suggestions on different reasons for and solutions for this error. I spent 12 hours working on these suggestions as I did clean uninstalls (see instructions here: http://support.turbine.com/link/portal/24001/24001/Article/3052/What-s-the-best-way-to-reinstall-LOTRO-or-DDO) of both copies of the game, downloaded and installed several times (including a final download and install of the High Definition version which is MUCH larger and time consuming to download) and kept having the same issues. I went into the game folders and copied the files from the backup folder to the main and reinstalling the patch, still no luck. I tried doing these things with firewall off and antivirus off. I opened my Windows downloads folder and deleted the game downloads from it so that I could get a complete download from there servers and not a reinstall of the same file I'd already downloaded in case it was corrupted. Finally I was at the last suggestion from the knowledge base, the last thing I would try before I filed a new ticket to Tech Support for this current trouble.
The RESOLUTION: Setting my User Account Control from the Default to it's lowest setting,Never notify (for Windows 7 it seems this is the way to turn it off). Then when I opened the game, which had seemingly already patched, the launcher started downloading more files. From this I conjecture that some of the files were being blocked by the User Account Control without giving me any notice all the times I had been opening the game after Patch 22.1. Instructions for making adjustments to the User Account Control can be found here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-user-account-control-on-off#1TC=windows-7
NOTE If you use this solution you should by all means reset your User Account Control to it's Nominal/Default position after the game finishes the patch to maintain your computers security.
I had never ever had this trouble before. I have no idea if this was due to changes in the game programming or recent Windows changes. I know it happened, and I now know the solution. I hope this might save someone else some frustration and time.
Cheers