Spore: More faulty than Basil Fawlty

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 05:11 PM

Yep you guessed it, I get the Black Screen of Sporedom when I try to start up. I get the usual "Spore has stopped working" prompt and the execption log in the Sporebin folder has that ACCESS_VIOLATION line, just like so many other people are getting.

I know there have been many threads on the same problem but it seems the suggestions to the problem are always the same and nearly always don't work.

I have tried all of the following with no success:

Check for and removed any trace of Spore Creature Creator
Updated my motherboard driver and bios, my SATA driver, my RealTek driver, removed and reinstalled Catalyst 8.8 and updated DirectX. I used CCleaner each time as well.
Removed the overclock on my E6400 CPU and a fan speed mod for my HD4870 graphics card
Removed 2GB on my memory in case Spore didn't like me having 4GB
Uninstalled 4oD and any hint of kontiki in case SecuROM went ape at it (though Bioshock and Mass Effect run without a problem)
Tried the CPU affinity trick
Tried the XP SP2 compatibility trick
Tried copying files from the DVD to the Spore folder
Tried a cracked Sporeapp.exe (I know I'm naughty but hey it didn't work anyway so it's gone)
Uninstalled Avast! anti-virus and added the Spore folder to my firewall exception list
Reinstalled Spore... 5 times now

I have run out of ideas as to what is wrong, I have had no problems at all running any game until now: Crysis, Mass Effect and even the ever so buggy Setters Rise Of An Empire was fine. The last game to give me this sort of hassle was Dungeon Siege 1 and that was years ago.

Has anybody actually managed to get from not being able to start Spore, to playing it? From browsing the forum it seems hardly anybody has yet!

Thanks

System Specs

O/S: Windows Vista x64 - Home Premium
CPU: Intel E6400 overclock to 3.2GHz
RAM: OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 @ 800MHz
GPU: Ati Radeon HD4870 512mb (Catalyst 8.

Display: Acer P243W @ 1920 x 1200
HDD: Samsumg 1TB SATAII 7200rpm

mibster · 13-09-2008, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamielicious

Yep you guessed it, I get the Black Screen of Sporedom when I try to start up. I get the usual "Spore has stopped working" prompt and the execption log in the Sporebin folder has that ACCESS_VIOLATION line, just like so many other people are getting.

I know there have been many threads on the same problem but it seems the suggestions to the problem are always the same and nearly always don't work.

I have tried all of the following with no success:

Check for and removed any trace of Spore Creature Creator
Updated my motherboard driver and bios, my SATA driver, my RealTek driver, removed and reinstalled Catalyst 8.8 and updated DirectX. I used CCleaner each time as well.
Removed the overclock on my E6400 CPU and a fan speed mod for my HD4870 graphics card
Removed 2GB on my memory in case Spore didn't like me having 4GB
Uninstalled 4oD and any hint of kontiki in case SecuROM went ape at it (though Bioshock and Mass Effect run without a problem)
Tried the CPU affinity trick
Tried the XP SP2 compatibility trick
Tried copying files from the DVD to the Spore folder
Tried a cracked Sporeapp.exe (I know I'm naughty but hey it didn't work anyway so it's gone)
Uninstalled Avast! anti-virus and added the Spore folder to my firewall exception list
Reinstalled Spore... 5 times now

I have run out of ideas as to what is wrong, I have had no problems at all running any game until now: Crysis, Mass Effect and even the ever so buggy Setters Rise Of An Empire was fine. The last game to give me this sort of hassle was Dungeon Siege 1 and that was years ago.

Has anybody actually managed to get from not being able to start Spore, to playing it? From browsing the forum it seems hardly anybody has yet!

Thanks

System Specs

O/S: Windows Vista x64 - Home Premium
CPU: Intel E6400 overclock to 3.2GHz
RAM: OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 @ 800MHz
GPU: Ati Radeon HD4870 512mb (Catalyst 8.

Display: Acer P243W @ 1920 x 1200
HDD: Samsumg 1TB SATAII 7200rpm

I Have excactly the same spec machine as you, except for 2 Gig of ram and I have XP. Also I have tried everything you have, without any luck. SO FOR ****S SAKE EA GIVE US A FIX

Just a quick update. Installed game on my GF's crappy laptop, Nvidia 8400M Gfx Dual core 1.5Ghz, 2 Gig of ram, Vista Home. Game loads without issues. Maybe this is just an ATI issue? Just wish I knew as my PC is so much more powerful, runs all the latest games. Well off to play spore on ****ty laptop, hopefully EA will have a fix for this complete and utter balls up of a release.

kamakaze171 · 13-09-2008, 05:51 PM

mine works mostly apart from space stage crashes and a few random bugs. i just hate the way my buildings' textures are in much lower resolution than in the editor. makes my town hall literally a 'fawlty tower' hehehe

edit: but yeah its an ati problem, the spore readme doesnt even mention the 4### series. they'll have a patch out from either EA or ATI soon id have thought

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 06:22 PM

Maybe nvidia paid Maxis to make the game buggy on the HD4870 to boost sales of its GTX260 and GTX280 cards. Actually does anyone on here have a GTX260 or GTX280 and have problems with Spore?

I have noticed that the HD4870 and HD4870X2 are not on the supported list, seems a bit odd really given how both cards have sold very well. The HD4850 is listed though and they use the same GPU, just with older memory.

At this rate by the time Spore is playable I'll have Fallout 3 and Spore won't get a look in till 2009 anyway.

kamakaze171 · 13-09-2008, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamielicious

Maybe nvidia paid Maxis to make the game buggy on the HD4870 to boost sales of its GTX260 and GTX280 cards. Actually does anyone on here have a GTX260 or GTX280 and have problems with Spore?

I have noticed that the HD4870 and HD4870X2 are not on the supported list, seems a bit odd really given how both cards have sold very well. The HD4850 is listed though and they use the same GPU, just with older memory.

At this rate by the time Spore is playable I'll have Fallout 3 and Spore won't get a look in till 2009 anyway.

exactly, someone commented that the amount of users in the 'tech support' bit of this forum has dropped because most people have got it working now. i think its just cos theyve gone to play something else. and as for fallout 3, i know that will justify £30, and it wont feel like im being given tasks to do for the sake of it.

WorMzy · 13-09-2008, 07:36 PM

A lot of people seem to be having problems with 64-bit machines.. tbh, I wasn't aware that so many people had them until I started frequenting these forums.

Could there be a problem with the fact that it is a 64-bit machine? I have no idea what difference it makes, having a 64-bit processor instead of a 32-bit processor, except that it allows you to have more RAM.

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 07:43 PM

I have found Vista x64 to be far more stable and slightly faster than the 32-bit version.

The original problem people had was with drivers but all my hardware had 64-bit drivers from the very beginning. Oh and Adobe software not liking it but that was Adobe's fault in the end.

Still I wonder if Spore was made with single-core 1.8GHz Athlon XP, 333MHz DDR RAM, 30GB HDD, Geforce 6600GT type systems and a 2005 release date in mind.

kamakaze171 · 13-09-2008, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamielicious

Still I wonder if Spore was made with single-core 1.8GHz Athlon XP, 333MHz DDR RAM, 30GB HDD, Geforce 6600GT type systems and a 2005 release date in mind.

hehehehe

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 07:53 PM

That was more or less what my PC was like in 2005. To be fair it handled X3:Reunion alright.

I just tried two more things:

Changing the screen resolution to see if Spore would work but alas no, I even tried 800x600, imagine how that looks on a 24" widescreen monitor!

Disabling Vista Aero and doing all those Catalyst CC changes, made no difference other than waste 4 minutes of my time.

Methinks a patch is the only hope left!

kamakaze171 · 13-09-2008, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamielicious

That was more or less what my PC was like in 2005. To be fair it handled X3:Reunion alright.

I just tried two more things:

Changing the screen resolution to see if Spore would work but alas no, I even tried 800x600, imagine how that looks on a 24" widescreen monitor!

Disabling Vista Aero and doing all those Catalyst CC changes, made no difference other than waste 4 minutes of my time.

Methinks a patch is the only hope left!

yeah definetly, i think ATI are probably busting their *** right now making sure that a hotfix will be released soon to sort this stuff out. especially as its still part of their current range. could be spore itself though, do the ATI forums have anything about it?

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 08:24 PM

I think the problem is with Spore and I actually don't think SecuROM is the culprit, otherwise the cracked exe would have worked.

Besides Mass Effect has the same DRM and runs superbly and the first few posts on here reporting problems mostly came from nvidia users (Geforce 8/9 rather than G200).

DarthIrishGuy · 13-09-2008, 08:26 PM

Who knows, maybe they've been finalizing and tweaking the game so long that it just can't deal with new hardware?

:P

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 08:30 PM

Yes I hear it runs great on 3DFX

kamakaze171 · 13-09-2008, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamielicious

Yes I hear it runs great on 3DFX

omg i shiver when i hear that name. paid near £200 back in the day for a 64mb voodoo 5. 3dfx went bust a month later and that was that! :S

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 08:42 PM

Latest trick:

Removed the Vista Codec Pack... no difference!

Harkole · 13-09-2008, 10:01 PM

Have you updated the configmaker.txt file with the correct driver version?

EDIT: Sorry this is the NVidia fix, don't know if anyone found/tried the same thing with ATI

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 10:07 PM

I saw that tip before, and I am not sure how to amend the file for ATI drivers.

According to dxdiag my driver version is 7.15.0010.0134 (Catalyst 8.

. Shall try and find a home for it in that txt file.

DarthIrishGuy · 13-09-2008, 10:21 PM

whats this configmaker.txt fix?

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 10:23 PM

It's a file in the config folder in Spore/Data.

As for what to do with it.... I have no idea but some people with nvidia cards changed some of the numbers about and fixed a problem.

DarthIrishGuy · 13-09-2008, 10:30 PM

Doesn't apply to me unfortunatly, but wow, I've never seen a config file quite like that.

Just having a quick glance at it and I can pick out any number of new cpu/gpu's that should be capable of running spore but won't with that thing

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 10:35 PM

It has the Geforce GTX 280 and 260 though even though the 280 was out after the HD4870. They don't list the 9800GTX+ I notice.

kamakaze171 · 13-09-2008, 10:40 PM

silly old EA. when they said (in movie advertisement deep voice) "spore, coming to galaxy near you september 5th" they should have added, "apart from ati 4870 owners, you'll have to wait a week or so, ahahahahahaahahahaha"
hehehe

DarthIrishGuy · 13-09-2008, 10:49 PM

Looks like they support up to it, but not it :P

"# x4x00 series (4.0)
card 0x9442 "Radeon HD 4850"

But again, new cards normally always work with slightly older software

flatfroggerx · 13-09-2008, 10:49 PM

You know it could be ATi's fault. For ages ATi have god awful drivers. Back a long time ago when I bought my 9600xt I had to wait like 2months for it to be properly usable in the latest games, after that I swapped to nvidia (since they kicked ati hard in the benchmarks). But I had friends who still bought ATi and suffered various issues with drivers and it annoyed them to no end.

Jamielicious · 13-09-2008, 11:37 PM

I have to say that Spore excluded (and I am not sure the fault is GPU related) the HD4870 is easily the most stable card I have owned since the Geforce 2 GTS which lasted a good 3 years and never once caused a crash.

My cards since then (Geforce FX 5700LE, Geforce 6600GT, Radeon x1600PRO & Geforce 8800GTS320) all caused no end of problems.

Still it is just odd that three of the most recent cards: HD4870, HD4870X2 and Geforce 9800GTX+ are not listed as supported. Even though they are three of the five top performing cards out at the moment.

I think it is going to be a long wait for a solution....

13-09-2008, 05:11 PM	#1 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	Spore: More faulty than Basil Fawlty Yep you guessed it, I get the Black Screen of Sporedom when I try to start up. I get the usual "Spore has stopped working" prompt and the execption log in the Sporebin folder has that ACCESS_VIOLATION line, just like so many other people are getting. I know there have been many threads on the same problem but it seems the suggestions to the problem are always the same and nearly always don't work. I have tried all of the following with no success: Check for and removed any trace of Spore Creature Creator Updated my motherboard driver and bios, my SATA driver, my RealTek driver, removed and reinstalled Catalyst 8.8 and updated DirectX. I used CCleaner each time as well. Removed the overclock on my E6400 CPU and a fan speed mod for my HD4870 graphics card Removed 2GB on my memory in case Spore didn't like me having 4GB Uninstalled 4oD and any hint of kontiki in case SecuROM went ape at it (though Bioshock and Mass Effect run without a problem) Tried the CPU affinity trick Tried the XP SP2 compatibility trick Tried copying files from the DVD to the Spore folder Tried a cracked Sporeapp.exe (I know I'm naughty but hey it didn't work anyway so it's gone) Uninstalled Avast! anti-virus and added the Spore folder to my firewall exception list Reinstalled Spore... 5 times now I have run out of ideas as to what is wrong, I have had no problems at all running any game until now: Crysis, Mass Effect and even the ever so buggy Setters Rise Of An Empire was fine. The last game to give me this sort of hassle was Dungeon Siege 1 and that was years ago. Has anybody actually managed to get from not being able to start Spore, to playing it? From browsing the forum it seems hardly anybody has yet! Thanks System Specs O/S: Windows Vista x64 - Home Premium CPU: Intel E6400 overclock to 3.2GHz RAM: OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 @ 800MHz GPU: Ati Radeon HD4870 512mb (Catalyst 8. Display: Acer P243W @ 1920 x 1200 HDD: Samsumg 1TB SATAII 7200rpm

13-09-2008, 05:51 PM	#3 (permalink)
kamakaze171 Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 254	mine works mostly apart from space stage crashes and a few random bugs. i just hate the way my buildings' textures are in much lower resolution than in the editor. makes my town hall literally a 'fawlty tower' hehehe edit: but yeah its an ati problem, the spore readme doesnt even mention the 4### series. they'll have a patch out from either EA or ATI soon id have thought Last edited by kamakaze171; 13-09-2008 at 05:55 PM..

13-09-2008, 06:22 PM	#4 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	Maybe it's a conspiracy Maybe nvidia paid Maxis to make the game buggy on the HD4870 to boost sales of its GTX260 and GTX280 cards. Actually does anyone on here have a GTX260 or GTX280 and have problems with Spore? I have noticed that the HD4870 and HD4870X2 are not on the supported list, seems a bit odd really given how both cards have sold very well. The HD4850 is listed though and they use the same GPU, just with older memory. At this rate by the time Spore is playable I'll have Fallout 3 and Spore won't get a look in till 2009 anyway.

13-09-2008, 10:07 PM	#17 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	I saw that tip before, and I am not sure how to amend the file for ATI drivers. According to dxdiag my driver version is 7.15.0010.0134 (Catalyst 8.. Shall try and find a home for it in that txt file.

13-09-2008, 10:49 PM	#24 (permalink)
flatfroggerx Forum Junkie Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 3,977	You know it could be ATi's fault. For ages ATi have god awful drivers. Back a long time ago when I bought my 9600xt I had to wait like 2months for it to be properly usable in the latest games, after that I swapped to nvidia (since they kicked ati hard in the benchmarks). But I had friends who still bought ATi and suffered various issues with drivers and it annoyed them to no end. __________________ *No longer buying any EA PC game which includes Limited Activations, I do NOT* endorse Limited Activations Opt for Securom Activation FREE versions of EA games through fairer services like steam**

13-09-2008, 07:36 PM	#6 (permalink)
WorMzy Forum Regular Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 655	A lot of people seem to be having problems with 64-bit machines.. tbh, I wasn't aware that so many people had them until I started frequenting these forums. Could there be a problem with the fact that it is a 64-bit machine? I have no idea what difference it makes, having a 64-bit processor instead of a 32-bit processor, except that it allows you to have more RAM.

13-09-2008, 07:43 PM	#7 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	I have found Vista x64 to be far more stable and slightly faster than the 32-bit version. The original problem people had was with drivers but all my hardware had 64-bit drivers from the very beginning. Oh and Adobe software not liking it but that was Adobe's fault in the end. Still I wonder if Spore was made with single-core 1.8GHz Athlon XP, 333MHz DDR RAM, 30GB HDD, Geforce 6600GT type systems and a 2005 release date in mind.

13-09-2008, 07:53 PM	#9 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	That was more or less what my PC was like in 2005. To be fair it handled X3:Reunion alright. I just tried two more things: Changing the screen resolution to see if Spore would work but alas no, I even tried 800x600, imagine how that looks on a 24" widescreen monitor! Disabling Vista Aero and doing all those Catalyst CC changes, made no difference other than waste 4 minutes of my time. Methinks a patch is the only hope left!

13-09-2008, 08:24 PM	#11 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	I think the problem is with Spore and I actually don't think SecuROM is the culprit, otherwise the cracked exe would have worked. Besides Mass Effect has the same DRM and runs superbly and the first few posts on here reporting problems mostly came from nvidia users (Geforce 8/9 rather than G200).

13-09-2008, 08:26 PM	#12 (permalink)
DarthIrishGuy Rookie Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 29	Who knows, maybe they've been finalizing and tweaking the game so long that it just can't deal with new hardware? :P

13-09-2008, 08:30 PM	#13 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	Yes I hear it runs great on 3DFX

13-09-2008, 08:42 PM	#15 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	Latest trick: Removed the Vista Codec Pack... no difference!

13-09-2008, 10:01 PM	#16 (permalink)
Harkole Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 45	Have you updated the configmaker.txt file with the correct driver version? EDIT: Sorry this is the NVidia fix, don't know if anyone found/tried the same thing with ATI

13-09-2008, 10:21 PM	#18 (permalink)
DarthIrishGuy Rookie Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 29	whats this configmaker.txt fix?

13-09-2008, 10:23 PM	#19 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	It's a file in the config folder in Spore/Data. As for what to do with it.... I have no idea but some people with nvidia cards changed some of the numbers about and fixed a problem.

13-09-2008, 10:30 PM	#20 (permalink)
DarthIrishGuy Rookie Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 29	Doesn't apply to me unfortunatly, but wow, I've never seen a config file quite like that. Just having a quick glance at it and I can pick out any number of new cpu/gpu's that should be capable of running spore but won't with that thing

13-09-2008, 10:35 PM	#21 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	It has the Geforce GTX 280 and 260 though even though the 280 was out after the HD4870. They don't list the 9800GTX+ I notice.

13-09-2008, 10:40 PM	#22 (permalink)
kamakaze171 Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 254	silly old EA. when they said (in movie advertisement deep voice) "spore, coming to galaxy near you september 5th" they should have added, "apart from ati 4870 owners, you'll have to wait a week or so, ahahahahahaahahahaha" hehehe

13-09-2008, 10:49 PM	#23 (permalink)
DarthIrishGuy Rookie Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 29	Looks like they support up to it, but not it :P "# x4x00 series (4.0) card 0x9442 "Radeon HD 4850" But again, new cards normally always work with slightly older software

13-09-2008, 11:37 PM	#25 (permalink)
Jamielicious Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 35	I have to say that Spore excluded (and I am not sure the fault is GPU related) the HD4870 is easily the most stable card I have owned since the Geforce 2 GTS which lasted a good 3 years and never once caused a crash. My cards since then (Geforce FX 5700LE, Geforce 6600GT, Radeon x1600PRO & Geforce 8800GTS320) all caused no end of problems. Still it is just odd that three of the most recent cards: HD4870, HD4870X2 and Geforce 9800GTX+ are not listed as supported. Even though they are three of the five top performing cards out at the moment. I think it is going to be a long wait for a solution....