Trouble Opening Armagetron!

[Firefox]

Hi, this game has been working great for me for like a week now and when i added a movie pack earlier it made the game start crashing. So naturally i removed the moviepack but now whenever i load the game its just a black screen with a tiny white horizontal line at the bottom. The game actually can be heard running in the background if i go to like a local game or something.
Any help would be great!
PS Ive also uninstalled and reinstalled the game!

[Firefox]

Im also noticing when i uninstall the program through control panel its not actually completely deleting it... does anyone know why this is or how i can like completely erase the program so i can start fresh?

[ConVicT]

I've had this problem b4 with the game not uninstalling completely (still keeps previous settings e.g language, instant chat messages). So go to C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Roaming and delete the "Armagetron" folder (make sure you have "show hidden folders" enabled, otherwise you won't see the "AppData" folder). Deleting this folder and reinstalling the game should make it like a first time installation again.

If this doesn't work, then i would suggest making a new user account on your computer to use only for Armagetron, which is what i did b4 i learned of the above. This means you can always just delete the user account if you ever do something with the game and don't know how to fix it, then just make a new one again but what i said b4 should work

[Phytotron]

OK, first of all: http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtop ... 15#p266515

Now, as to your specific problem, I don't know why the game started acting strange after you removed the moviepack, but as to the initial crash, a) make sure you put the moveipack in the right location to begin with, b) look inside the moviepack folder and see if there's a file called settings.cfg. That needs to be there.

That's all I got at this point for troubleshooting.


And just for future reference, to the developers: I've noticed that Windows users often go to "uninstall/reinstall" as a first resort whenever things go wrong. I've gotten the impression over the years that that must be typical for Windows programs. How often is that a solution for Armagetron? (And that notion of creating a separate user account just for Arma is rather ridiculous, isn't it?)

b4 ... uninstalling completely

Before, six letters. Uninstalling and completely, twelve and ten letters, respectively. There's no excuse for you not typing out the word "before."

[Word]

it usually never was of much help, because I didn't know I need to delete the var folder as well - I never did that because I wanted to keep most of my personal setup (instant chats with long server commands/cockpit files, keyboard setup etc.). My problems were usually related to things in the var folder.

So that may explain why he created a new user account: to get a "fresh" var folder (and as he said it's unnecessary when you learned where it is and can delete it yourself. Although I thought I knew the folders of my laptop inside out I already played for half a year before I accidently found it, since the Local directory is hidden by default.)

[nux]

Im also noticing when i uninstall the program through control panel its not actually completely deleting it... does anyone know why this is or how i can like completely erase the program so i can start fresh?

How cute, a windows user who still believe they can uninstall applications properly from the control panel. Id also provide the answer so i dont come off too strong, but its already been said before.

PS: its pretty common for software to ask (or at least be able to set it manually) if you want to delete user data or keep it, maybe it wouldnt be a bad idea to add it.

[Z-Man]

I've gotten the impression over the years that that must be typical for Windows programs. How often is that a solution for Armagetron?

For Arma, whenever the user has messed up the files in the installation, which is comparatively easy to do on your typical Windows setup, for example if you install a moviepack the wrong way. Typical Mac and Linux installations are more robust, forcing you to open the app bundle or sudoing before you can do harm. For other software, registry entries can also get messed up as well. So yeah, in general, on Windows, if things go wrong and you can't find a solution in a few minutes, reinstalling is something worth a try. Even reformatting. I lost half a day of work reinstalling MS SQL server because even for the installer to work in the messed up system I inherited, I had to clear out about 30 very specific, cryptic registry keys (each time, to get the next key to delete, I had to re-run the installer). That was fun.

(And that notion of creating a separate user account just for Arma is rather ridiculous, isn't it?)

(yep.)

To the OP: Which moviepack was it that you installed correctly? Maybe its settings.cfg did something weird to your user.cfg.
Oh, and if you still have the user.cfg that was messed up: please send it along. The best solution to user.cfg corruption is to have the game auto-correct it, we do that now for the common texture mode problem, for example.

nix: if you can find out how to do that for all users in NSIS, go ahead The only reason we're not doing it (with asking for permission) is because I didn't want to bother. Of course, that decision was made back when XP ruled; now it may suffice to just delete the user data of the current user, which is easier.

[ConVicT]

(And that notion of creating a separate user account just for Arma is rather ridiculous, isn't it?)

Well i don't think so because i didn't used to know how to get rid of it altogether and arma seemed to interfere with a few things on my computer e.g svchost.exe. Used to be that whenever i run arma, everything would be fine, until i exited the game, then after that, svchost.exe would just eat up all my cpu, for no reason that i could get my head around. (this would only happen maybe once a week but always when i played that game, so i thought it easy just to delete the user account make a new one install the game........No problems again (and btw that takes me like 2 minutes)

In fact this is a question i would like to add. If anyone knows why this happens, please share.

[Z-Man]

This doesn't seem to be a problem specific to Armagetron:
https://www.google.com/search?q=svchost ... 8&oe=utf-8
It's probably just triggered over time and you only notice it after leaving the game because before, the game hogs the CPU.

First link in that search (for me) gives a solution suggestion:
http://www.technibble.com/how-to-fix-sv ... mory-leak/

[delinquent]

Does the installer add more than one registry key? I've noticed that there's more than one entry in my registry after cycling the installation, if only to move it to another drive.

[Z-Man]

Yes, but they're all required (for the uninstaller to appear in the control panel, for repeated installations to remember the installation directory) and removed on uninstall.

[delinquent]

Double check that removal thing, 'cos cCleaner (needless plug, I know) picks them up when I have uninstalled (yes, appdata entries too) arma from my missus' laptop. Windows is awkward though, I know.

[compguygene]

You should all try the Revo Uninstaller. The free version will uninstall an application and make sure to remove all those extra registry keys and other files. It has saved me a lot of time and hassle on Windows systems.

[compguygene]

accidental double post fail.

[delinquent]

I'll have a look but tbh, I hate installing extra stuff on my PC. I don't dig all those "utility" programs like driver updaters, uninstallers and "pc boosters" (what does that even mean??).
I tend to stick with AVG, MS office, Adobe Suite and Ccleaner, then a couple of games and some video codecs. Everything else is pretty much just plugin stuff, fattens your computer and quite often makes it sluggish.