rec.autos.simulators

GPL runs great solo on Bruce's machine, but he has some problems:

1.  GPL Multiplayer doesn't work.  GPL crashes to the desktop (aka CTD)
as soon as you try to enter the multiplayer screen.  This happens either
when launching GPL standalone or from WinVROC (which works ok
otherwise).

2. GEM+ doesn't work.  When you launch it, it complains that there is an
invalid engine parameter in GPL.EXE and then displays a corrupted
version of GEM+'s own main page.  All of the variable fields are blacked
out and other areas have a strange pattern.  You can click between
sheets but they all have the same problem.

3. GRE doesn't work.  It displays error popups when you launch it and
when you try to load a setup, and won't load the values in the setup
file properly.

I went home and tried all these things on my own XP installation (brand
new this week!)  GPL Multiplayer works fine, as does GEM+.  But GRE
doesn't work on my machine either.

Ok, it looks like GRE has a problem.  My brother Nate, who wrote it,
says he's received emails from several XP users that are having trouble
with GRE.  Is anyone running GRE on XP with no problem?  Any Visual
Basic experts out there who might be able to suggest how to make GRE
work on XP machines?

The other two issues could be installation-related.  On Bruce's machine
I installed GPL, GEM+, WinVROC, and GRE using their setup programs.  

On my own machine, all these programs were already in place, because
they were all on the D partition of a hard drive that previously had a
Win98 installation on its C partition.  After I got XP, I simply
formatted C and installed WinXP Pro on it, and then made links to the
existing GPL, GEM+, WinVROC, and GRE executables on D.

I've looked inside the CABs for GEM+ and GRE and found that both include
Visual Basic runtime files and other DLL's.  I seem to recall reading
that XP already has a VB runtime, so maybe one or both of these
installations over-wrote the XP VB modules on Bruce's machine and are
causing the problems with GEM+?  

I can't think of anything that might be causing the multiplayer CTD,
though.  (See below for more details on Bruce's machine and mine.)

My first thought was to roll Bruce's XP back to a restore point prior to
when I started messing with his machine <grin> but I figured maybe I
should check with you guys first.  I think some XP expertise is called
for - expertise which I don't have!  

Has anyone with XP had any of these problems and resolved them, or are
there any XP experts who can suggest the best approach?

Our machines differ in some ways that might be significant:

Bruce's machine:

WinXP Home
Dell Dimension 4400; Pentium 4 at 1.6 GHz
256MB DDR SDRAM
64MB DDR GeForce3 Ti 200 with DVI
Integrated Audio
40GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
3COM PCI 10/100 Remote Wake Up Network Card
56K PCI Data Fax Modem for Windows
8X/4X/32X CD-RW/DVD Combination Drive
Logitech MOMO (new w/*** & shifter) with 4.20 driver
AT&T cable through Toshiba 1100 cable modem and
    Belkin hardware router (see note below)

Alison's machine:

WinXP Professional, SP1
Homebuilt ASUS P2B; Celeron at 1.0 GHz
256MB SDRAM
GeForce 2 Ultra
SoundBlaster Live! Value
40GB and 8GB WD Hard Drives
3COM PCI 10/100 Network Card
40X Acer CD-ROM Drive
Logitech FF (Old Red) with 4.20 driver
CH Pro pedals with Radio Shack game to USB adapter
AT&T cable through Toshiba PCX2200 cable modem and
   Winroute software router (see previous long thread)

Other notes:

On Bruce's machine we had to install Papy's Speed Fix for GPL; otherwise
GPL just CTD's on startup.  My own machine is not fast enough to require
the Speed Fix.

On Bruce's machine I installed GPL from the CD, and then made a copy of
that install.  I overlaid my own installation from the CD-R's I burned
onto one of the copies.  I then applied the Speed Fix to GPL.EXE in both
of these installations.  Both exhibit the CTD when trying to enter the
GPL Multiplayer screen.  

Since Bruce's fresh GPL install had a "***" copy of GPL.EXE from the
GPL CD with only the Speed Fix applied, it appears that the multiplayer
CTD isn't related to the GPL 1.2 patch, sound patch, Disco Fix, Bart
Westra's Cars Behind patch or whatever other patches might have been
applied to the copy of my own GPL.EXE.

The original GEM (aka EngineChanger.exe) also complains that there is an
invalid engine parameter in GPL.EXE.  GEM and GEM+ work fine on a copy
of the same GPL.EXE on my own XP install.

We bypassed Bruce's hardware router and connected his computer directly
to his cable modem.  This didn't make any difference; GPL still did a
CTD when attempting to enter the multiplayer screen.  

We also tried setting alternate_ip_addr_lookup to 0 in core.ini
(normally it has to be set to 1 on my machines).  No joy.

Thanks in advance for any help you might have, guys!

Alison

Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me.
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Should have mentioned up front that Bruce's machine has XP Home on it.

I noticed the earlier thread about disk indexing on NTFS under XP, so we
checked Bruce's machine.  He has NTFS and disk indexing was turned on
for the GPL folder but the disk indexing service wasn't started.  

We started the disk indexing service and tried running GPL, but it
crashed as usual when entering the multiplayer screen.

Alison

Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me.
http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

I'm running GRE in XP Home and the only error I've been receiving is
"parseTrackIni:  Error 52 - Bad file name or number at
C:\games\sierra\GPL\tracks\<none>\track.ini".  I'm guessing this isn't
OS-related, probably a typo in one of my season.ini files somewhere
that I haven't been able to find.

Otherwise it runs fine, I can save/load setups, copy chassis and
gearboxes, etc.  No crashes or anything.  FWIW, I'm also using FAT32
which may/may not make a diffference.

Jason

If it's of any interest I get exactly the same error, and am also using
FAT32 on xp pro.  Haven't re-installed engine manager since I upgraded to
xp, might have a try and see what happens

I have the same exact problem.  I never used GRE when I was using
win98 so I dont' know if this is an XP problem.

--
karkrazy AT softhome DOT net
http://karkrazy.m4driving.sm

A few possibly obvious - and maybe irrelevant ;) - questions, but:

-Have you tried Compatability mode for the apps that are crashing?
-Wasn't there an issue where GPL tried to poll your COM ports or modem
when you went into multiplayer?  I have some vague recollection of
this, and maybe that's the source of the crash?
-Is he running as an administrator of his own machine?  (Don't know if
that's relevant for XP Home - only bothered with XP Pro so far).
-How does he connect to the Internet?  Is the internet connection
firewall (or some other firewall prog) on?  Haven't heard of a problem
there, but you never know.

HTH,
Kendt

Bye,
Leo

Alison (I can't believe I'm replying to the famous Alison Hine! :-) ),

I run GPL on WinXP Pro without any trouble at all, no compatibility mode
needed. I recently had similar troubles when I installed GPL on another
(brand new) machine with XP Pro. I tried several things to fix it, but in
the end I simply copied the GPL folders (less my player files) from my good
install over the new install. It then worked exactly as it should. This had
the added benefit that the new install also had all the additional tracks
and car graphic updates in one simple step.

As for GEM+, I never managed to get it to work at all. GRE also gives me the
initial error 52 (as others have reported), after which it appears to work
OK.

Hope this helps.

--
 - Peter Ogden (GPLRank: -9.312)
   Perth, Western Australia
   http://www.locost7.info

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.413 / Virus Database: 232 - Release Date: 6/11/2002

Does it still work otherwise?  I get the "could not parse..." error
message, but the software still works exactly as it should
functionality wise.  I just have to click "ok" everytime I open a
setup.

Jason

Just an observation.  Try to load setup, when the error pops up, don't
click okay just yet, look at the Setup Target section of GRE (next to
the image of the guy holding a wrench), you'll notice it's trying to
load up the "<none>" field, that's why the error appears.

--
karkrazy AT softhome DOT net
http://karkrazy.m4driving.sm

I had Bruce check all these things (he'a already running as an
administrator) but still no luck.  :-(

Alison

Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me.
http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

Interesting that everyone seems to be getting the same error from GRE on
XP.  Hopefully that means it won't be too hard to fix.

Alison

Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me.
http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

However, I did try this and had no luck.  I actually took three CD's
over to Bruce's, one with a copy of my own GPL install and some tracks,
and the others filled with other tracks.  

This install has the same problem as the clean install we did from the
Papy GPL CD; it crashes to desktop when we try to enter the multiplayer
screen.

However, since Bruce's machine requires the speed patch, and mine
didn't, we had to apply the speed patch on his machine.  It's occurred
to me that maybe there's something about the speed patch installation
that screws up under XP.

Just now I've applied the speed patch on one of my own Win98 machines,
and I'm emailing Bruce the resulting exe.  Maybe that will resolve the
problem.

Anybody else using the GPL Speed Patch on XP?

Alison

On Sat, 9 Nov 2002 12:58:23 +0800, "Peter Ogden"

Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me.
http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

I'm running GPL with the speed fix under WinXP Pro SP1 without any problems. I
did a fresh install from  the original CD to a FAT32 drive. Then updated to GPL
1.2, installed the D3D patch and cpu speed fix. Finally I replaced the cars,
players, seasons and tracks directories plus some files in the main directory by
the files from my old PC.

I've never been racing online. But this morning I tried to start a multiplayer
race on my two PCs over LAN, and it worked fine (well, racing against myself on
two PCs with just one monitor and keyboard connected by a switchbox is a little
bit tricky ;-)

Just an idea: is there a desktop firewall running on that machine, or is the XP
built-in firewall enabled? I remember some discussions in this ng about issues
with GPL and firewalls.

Good luck
Werner

PC specs:
Win XP Pro SP1
DirectX 8.1
Intel P4 2.2 GHz
512 MB RAM
Asus P4B266-E Board
Asus V8420 (gf4 ti 4200)
C-Media soundchip onboard
2x 40 GB WesternDigital HDs, all partitions FAT32

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