"Screen Goes Black after Login" / OpenAL issues thread

[survient]

Figured I'd centralize a thread for this problem since there seems to be a lot of disorganized threads about it, and the fact that I'm still having issues. First off, the "solution":

I can't guarantee that this will fix things, but it worked for me and has on a bunch of other games I play. DDO uses OpenAL, which, depending on the version, doesn't always like to play nice with your sound card, depending on your card manufacturer. For me this happens more often than not since my on board card is pretty picky(or OpenAL is, one of the two), and I found an updated OpenAL library that every game I've replaced it with has worked fine(that was having the issue). So basically download this OpenAl installer, run it, copy the OpenAL32.dll from your C:\Windows\system32 directory file, put it in your DDO install directory where you'll see the old OpenAL.dll, which you'll want to replace with the new one. The game should start after this, if not it may be another problem.

http://connect.creativelabs.com/open...ds/oalinst.zip



Ok so that works fine, but the updater likes to replace the OpenAL.dll file when it updates, which reverts you back to the original problem, even when you set the file to read only. What I'm trying to figure is what permissions need to be changed to the file so that the DDO updater doesn't overwrite the file, but can still read from it. Any ideas?

[Kaldahr]

Hmmm... haven't read the other threads. My guess is that if you are wanting to deal with just permissions you would have to set it read-only and hope that the updater wouldn't change the permissions to update the file. I suppose you could also run the game while in a limited account but that might cause more problems.

You could dump something like this into a .bat file on your desktop.

cd\
cd Program Files
cd turbine
cd DDO Unlimited
copy openal.bak openal.dll /y
dndlauncher.exe

I just tested this and it works. It's not elegant, but it would accomplish what you're setting out to do. You'd just have to make sure that the version of the file that you're wanting to keep is named with a .bak extension or change code to to suit.

[survient]

Yeah that should do it. I have a macro programmed to run the .bat for me since the darn updater likes to raeg and replace that dll every time it updates. For those having "I don't like this OpenAL32.dll version", try the official from http://connect.creativelabs.com/open...ds/oalinst.zip, install it using the exe, and copy the OpenAL32.dll from your C:\Windows\system32 directory. cheers

[Janovjev]

I'm prolly gonna get banned before i even play so i can play because it doesnt work + i had to aska total stranger to register for me...kinda ironic...hehe...so...login failed...may i ask ...how?write me a pm on how to fix the stupidest error i have ever layed balls on....


if you thought not eyeballs...then you is pervy...yay...-.-

[Babale]

Thank you so much! This fixed my game!

Any idea why it would suddenly stop working, with no update?