Problems

[linus371]

I have a problem whit spore:
First time I instal it(I buyed ALL spore PC games on the same day) every thing work fine. But after some days it did just stop working. When I started spore I hear ALL the sounds from the menu, but my screen is 100% black. I reinstal the game, and every things work fine again. But after some weeks it stop working again!!! I reinsta the(again) and every thing works fine. But after some weeks it stoped work again!! AND I DON`T WANT TO REINSTAL THE GAME EVERY WEEK! Help

[TheMrZ]

This belongs in the technical support thread. It's probably an issue with your graphics card and drivers: make sure all drivers are fully updated and check your settings for anti-aliasing etc (turn it off if it's on, Spore doesn't support it)

[linus371]

Originally Posted by TheMrZ

This belongs in the technical support thread. It's probably an issue with your graphics card and drivers: make sure all drivers are fully updated and check your settings for anti-aliasing etc (turn it off if it's on, Spore doesn't support it)

My graphics card works fine, but The game begin working again after I reinstal it. But it will soon stop work again

[TheMrZ]

Graphics cards can have/develop compatability issues with games and other software.

There are three possibilities: either you have a Hard Disk problem where your data corrupts itself over time (and very quickly) making the Spore files corrupted and the display not function correctly. It is also corrupting in the same way every time, regardless of where on the hard drive it is placed.

Or your Graphics Card is having an issue with it, causing it to fail to display.

Finally: your firewall or other security settings are interfering.

The latter is the most common issue with games, the middle one the most likely given the symptoms and second most common issue.

The first is incredibly unlikely, almost unheard of and startling. It indicates either a very odd hard drive malfunction, or a virus attacking Spore specifically sitting around on your computer. Both I find very unrealistic, you would be the first in the world to experience either.

If you can rule out the firewall thing (try turning your firewall off and playing) then it must be a graphics card issue.

[EAUK_Aurora]

[Moved to Spore Technical Support]

[flatfroggerx]

Originally Posted by TheMrZ

Graphics cards can have/develop compatability issues with games and other software.

There are three possibilities: either you have a Hard Disk problem where your data corrupts itself over time (and very quickly) making the Spore files corrupted and the display not function correctly. It is also corrupting in the same way every time, regardless of where on the hard drive it is placed.

Or your Graphics Card is having an issue with it, causing it to fail to display.

Finally: your firewall or other security settings are interfering.

The latter is the most common issue with games, the middle one the most likely given the symptoms and second most common issue.

The first is incredibly unlikely, almost unheard of and startling. It indicates either a very odd hard drive malfunction, or a virus attacking Spore specifically sitting around on your computer. Both I find very unrealistic, you would be the first in the world to experience either.

Easy there, I don't think its hardware failure, so OP you can relax a bit.

The game used to work but you changed nothing on your PC? Then the only thing which has changed is spore (updating saves/caches/etc).

Your firewall (if you have one) would only stop you signing in.

As for graphical issues, hardware failure is somewhat out of the question, unless blue screens of death appear specifically pointing to graphic issues I wouldnt worry.

As for some kind of software/driver issue its a possibility but the fact the game runs for a while is suspect.

Its possible your harddrive might be a bit dodgy but I doubt it, i'd run checkdisk/scandisk on it and see what that says. I doubt it though.


What I SUSPECT is happening is spore is messing its data files up. It might be worth giving this a shot:

*NOTE: I'm not 100% sure if this will fix your issues (see below why), but if it does work your save games may be bad and this is where your issue is, your creations will be okay but saves will be gone*

If you are on vista/windows 7 go here:
C:\Users\[yourname]\AppData\Roaming\SPORE

On XP:
C:\Documents and settings\[yourname]\Application data\SPORE

Rename the SPORE folder to something like backupspore, then try running the game, if it works then its your saves/game caches, nothing really you can do to fix them. If it doesn't work just rename the folder back to normal, delete any new folder with the same name if the game made some.

If it doesn't then you might want to try going to here:

C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\SPORE\Data

and try renaming the config folder to backupconfig, then try again.

Failing that, have you tried running spore in "safemode", right click your spore shortcut and edit the long line which says sporeapp.exe" and add -safe to the end so it looks like this:

"C:\blahblah\\\sporeapp.exe" -safe

See if it works.

If all this fails rename the folders back to their old names and delete any new ones the game created in their place.



This issue is largely a mystery, these errors have popped up since the launch of the game. I suspected it might have been the copy protection at one point. I've suggested lots to people in the past and nothing really seemed to work, the above is pretty much the only thing that I haven't suggested in the past.