Windows 10 installation problems

[Isclay]

Hi -

I'm hoping someone has some insight on this. I have a brand new, custom built, 8 core PC, 32G Ram and nVidia 6g vid card.

I have installed fresh copies of EU 6 times now and each time the install goes fine (but takes FOREVER) and every time it finishes...I cannot launch the game. The launch button simply won't work. It is totally greyed out.

Now I have done a bunch of research and to no avail. I've tried a bunch of suggested fixes and I can list those if anyone is interested in a future convo.

I have also chatted extensively with support on the EU page and they can provide no real answers either. I will give them props for trying really really hard to help me. Bunches of suggestions but no fix.

Help! Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

~ISC~

 

[Svarog]

I'm sure that support is mentioned it, but just in case - since it's a fresh Windows installation, make sure that all these ports are opened in the Windows Firewall.

 

[the-unknown]

Are you able to play other 3d intensive games?

If you don't play other games, you can get one of those 3D benchmark programs to test.

This is just to make sure that you got all your appropriate drivers / configuration necessary for playing 3D games.

 

[StarGlider]

Never had a problem installing on Win 10 before.

I always, always make sure tho, before installing any games, make sure that Windows is fully upto date.
Make sure all the latest drivers are installed, for mobo, gpu etc.

Never had to open ports etc. it just works.

Probably your AV / Internet security causing the problems.

 

[aia]

First, a tip: Before you do anything "advanced" down there, try rebooting computer ("restart computer" ) since it's the most "user friendly" action that "resets stuff".

Are you using a DNS server in Another country (ie Another continent) than the one you are in?

The game files are located on a "conent delivery network", and it tries to be smart: there is one server (IP-address) in Europe, one server in USA and so on. And if you are in Europé, you use Google DNS, then the IP address your computer will get when asking for update server is the american one - and then you may suffer from way slow downloads (throttling?) or even that the client can't connect to the download server.

Then, Another thing will happen: The way the client detects if the servers are in "maintenance mode" isn't by asking a master server, but simply to check if it can connect to the login/update server. If you now have "wrong" IP address, or your client can't look up the IP address, the client will grey out the "launch" button. This can also happen if your ISPs DNS server doesn't respond properly (at first), and then Windows will (temporarily) store the IP address of 0.0.0.0 and when client loader gets this, it Thinks game is offline. The faulty (0.0.0.0) IP address will then be cached by both Windows and Internet Explorer (=client loader info window).

One way to clear the 0.0.0.0 address is by closing all web browser windows (and client loader), and then type "ipconfig /flushdns" on a windows command line (windows-R "cmd.exe"). The "ipconfig /flushdns" doesn't seem to require admin rights (at least in Windows 7).

A Quick-and-Dirty workaround to this is to ask someone ingame who lives in your "zone" (and you can trust not to do anyting fishy) for the IP addresses of the login and download servers, and add them to your .hosts file.

Another case when start button is greyed out is that the client is, technically, running but for one reason or Another not visible. In this case, you could use task manager and kill the processes; though the easiest solution is to reboot computer. (I mention this last as I guess you have already rebooted the computer a few times).

There could be a third case also: You are using an internet Connection that is limited (metered or monthly quota). As the game is pretty large, you are likely to hit the monthly limit in the process of downloading, and then client loader then detects your installation isn't complete.

 

[Ferial]

Many many words

After reading op I was going to post many of the things you said. Glad I read before posting. Even learnt a thing or two! +rep

 

[CozMoDan]

First, a tip: Before you do anything "advanced" down there, try rebooting computer ("restart computer" ) since it's the most "user friendly" action that "resets stuff".

Are you using a DNS server in Another country (ie Another continent) than the one you are in?

The game files are located on a "conent delivery network", and it tries to be smart: there is one server (IP-address) in Europe, one server in USA and so on. And if you are in Europé, you use Google DNS, then the IP address your computer will get when asking for update server is the american one - and then you may suffer from way slow downloads (throttling?) or even that the client can't connect to the download server.

Then, Another thing will happen: The way the client detects if the servers are in "maintenance mode" isn't by asking a master server, but simply to check if it can connect to the login/update server. If you now have "wrong" IP address, or your client can't look up the IP address, the client will grey out the "launch" button. This can also happen if your ISPs DNS server doesn't respond properly (at first), and then Windows will (temporarily) store the IP address of 0.0.0.0 and when client loader gets this, it Thinks game is offline. The faulty (0.0.0.0) IP address will then be cached by both Windows and Internet Explorer (=client loader info window).

One way to clear the 0.0.0.0 address is by closing all web browser windows (and client loader), and then type "ipconfig /flushdns" on a windows command line (windows-R "cmd.exe"). The "ipconfig /flushdns" doesn't seem to require admin rights (at least in Windows 7).

A Quick-and-Dirty workaround to this is to ask someone ingame who lives in your "zone" (and you can trust not to do anyting fishy) for the IP addresses of the login and download servers, and add them to your .hosts file.

Another case when start button is greyed out is that the client is, technically, running but for one reason or Another not visible. In this case, you could use task manager and kill the processes; though the easiest solution is to reboot computer. (I mention this last as I guess you have already rebooted the computer a few times).

There could be a third case also: You are using an internet Connection that is limited (metered or monthly quota). As the game is pretty large, you are likely to hit the monthly limit in the process of downloading, and then client loader then detects your installation isn't complete.

Wow that is a lot of stuff but I have one question would the game get to all of that before it was loaded ? Another words if he can not even push the start button (start the game) how can all this matter, are most if not all of these things have to have the loader started to even know if something is not right? To me that is kind of like mouse over the MS Word icon but never push the button and wonder why you can not writer a letter or putting the keys in the ignition of a car but never but never start the car and then wonder if you have enough gas or if the engine is even working He does say he gets past the TOU and if he does that and the internet connections to get that info comes from MA is working, right?

One other thing you might try. Before you start the ToU you might right click on the icon and click run as admin.

 

[CozMoDan]

Wow that is a lot of stuff but I have one question would the game get to all of that before it was loaded ? Another words if he can not even push the start button (start the game) how can all this matter, are most if not all of these things have to have the loader started to even know if something is not right? To me that is kind of like mouse over the MS Word icon but never push the button and wonder why you can not writer a letter or putting the keys in the ignition of a car but never but never start the car and then wonder if you have enough gas or if the engine is even working He does say he gets past the TOU and if he does that and the internet connections to get that info comes from MA is working, right?

One other thing you might try. Before you start the ToU you might right click on the icon and click run as admin.

Ok I am an idiot I forgot one thing to ask before I should have commented. Were able to check for updates ? You know the green bar that goes across the bottom when you get past the ToU ? If you can then you would clearly have a connection to MA and what I said stands if not then what the others say could well be the problem. I just don't understand why all of a sudden you can no longer get to MA. I would think that when you used WIN7 or WIN8 you were able to install and everything was fine, so why would that change ?

 

[aia]

Another words if he can not even push the start button (start the game) how can all this matter

I was assuming he got client loader up, but that the "start" button was greyed out.

If you have DNS or connection issues, the EULA window might turn upp blank (or not at all), as, as far as I remember (I could be wrong), the EULA isn't a static text file but a web page that the client loader pulls from a web server each time. Not sure about this, but I think you could get a (windows) popup window saying something like "unable to connect to update server".

 

[CozMoDan]

I was assuming he got client loader up, but that the "start" button was greyed out.

If you have DNS or connection issues, the EULA window might turn upp blank (or not at all), as, as far as I remember (I could be wrong), the EULA isn't a static text file but a web page that the client loader pulls from a web server each time. Not sure about this, but I think you could get a (windows) popup window saying something like "unable to connect to update server".

He has not answered here but we had a PM conversation and he said he finally got it to run but crashed every 3 or 4 minutes. That was a couple of days ago and I have not heard from him since. But clearly it has nothing to do with the connection. As I said before why would all of a sudden you have connection problems ? When having a problem the connection is about the last thing I would check because that would affect almost everything and I think one would notice that long before starting the game, like e-mail, web sites etc.

 

[aia]

He has not answered here but we had a PM conversation and he said he finally got it to run but crashed every 3 or 4 minutes. That was a couple of days ago and I have not heard from him since. But clearly it has nothing to do with the connection. As I said before why would all of a sudden you have connection problems ? When having a problem the connection is about the last thing I would check because that would affect almost everything and I think one would notice that long before starting the game, like e-mail, web sites etc.

Once every 6 months or so, probably due to ISP DNS problem, I have a headache getting in, stemming from that the client can't connect to the update server. Sometimes it's my ISP DNS just answering sluggish causing my firewall to return 0.0.0.0 (ie "host not found") which then computer caches. Occasionally, it's because the ISP DNS doesn't answer, and I use seconary DNS (=google dns) instead. And when I use google DNS, most things work, except client trying to download updates from MA; so I have to fiddle with my host file to cause client go to the correct download server.

The 0.0.0.0 problem can happen with any website, and on the other hand is easy to fix (close all IE windows, as Internet Explorer tend to cache DNS name lookup, and then "ipconfig /flushdns"). Again this happens kind'a frequently (at least with my ISP's DNS:es) and can happen will all web sites browsed in a web browser (and IE is making things worse by remembe ring faulty IP adresses rather than trying to fetch address again).

The other problem, to make the client loader use the geographically correct download server is triickier to solve as it's not as easy to fix as just chosing your region in a drop-down list. (*I* am always in same region, it's just that Google DNS sometimes picks hosts, ie download server, in USA irather than in Europe).

Though, getting a disconnect every third minute while ingame of course can show that there are severe network reliability problems. Maybe a WLAN (wireless) with a lot of disturbances, "mobile internet" with weak signal reception, bad wiring (maybe one of eight wires is off causing network to use 4 wire rather than 8 wire and in its turn make wired connection less robust). If network wiring or signal reception is bad it's no wonder if download doesn't work, of course. If network relaibility is terrible (so terrible it's unrecoverable by TCP cnnection checksums) it could happen that a file has corrupt data somewhere.

 

[Edward-James]

Hello,

i also had some issues in that direction,dc every 2-5 minutes,client laoder not properly loading etc

had to change connection type to 56k in tools (although i have a 75mb connection)

give my pc a static ip and open ports on router...

firewall +antivirus check

open eu as admin

+ check if internet explorer is setp correctly (also with internet/connection setting)
because this is the windows default browser which EU only uses....if it isnt setup correctly ..the loader cannot start right...



Eddie

 

[CozMoDan]

I have no doubt about you guy's problems but it sounds to me these type of problems are external not local to his machine. I have to say that I had a Northstar horizon with two floppies 784K each as I recall in 1984 which was my first computer. This was really before the internet was hardly working and I can't remember what the free browser was called Net(something), I am sure someone will know but most of my friends got on without a browser at all. What I am getting to is from then to now I have never had problems like the ones you all are talking about either mine was up or down and if it was down nothing worked, not just a single program, and when it was up everything worked.

 

[aia]

i also had some issues in that direction,dc every 2-5 minutes,client laoder not properly loading etc

had to change connection type to 56k in tools (although i have a 75mb connection)

1. Do you have a wireless network? Also if you do, it is set to work in the 2,4 Ghz band (like 802.11b)?
1b. Do you have a wired, wireless (ie GSM/3G/4G/LTE based mobile) or a "Cable" (using Cable TV cables) internet Connection? (If you are in Sweden, you can measure your internet speed using "bredbandskollen").

2. Have you checked your computer that it doesn't things you don't Think it should do? (Things like, it's idling at say 40% CPU rather than <4% CPU, the hard drive light is constantly blinking, you have a process taking up a lot of bandwith like some torrent program?

3. Have you ran any antivirus/malware check on it recently?

4. How much RAM and video ram do your computer have? Do you have at least 4 GB in ram and 1 GB in video ram?

5. Is it a stationary computer (eg "tower" model or a laptop? (Historically, running PE on laptops have generally been a bad idea unless you keep to non-busy areas, with one reeason being a "business" optimized graphic adapter rather than a gaming adapter, and more heat-buildup than in a stationary computer with several fans).

 

[aia]

I have to say that I had a Northstar horizon with two floppies 784K each as I recall in 1984 which was my first computer.

Oh you must have beat me to it then. I've had my first computer back in say 1984 or so also, but it was a typical "Home computer", with printer and cassette player (floppy drives were expensive for that computer). THought it could technically work as a terminal as it had no harddrive you had to load serial driver (computer had no UART)/terminal program from a cassette. I didn't bother with it. But if you did you could use it to connect to internet (as a terminal).

Back in 1986 or so I got a computer with harddrive (an odd Swedish made one), and it was first then I begun with modems, it was a 1200 baud Telia modem ("heath comm") that probably Wold survive a tank. As that computer came with "Kermit" it was the program I used...

My first "online" internet Connection was through dialup (vt100) using "Lynx" as a browser (launched at remote computer). And when I begun my first job, the email was fetched using dialup and the "uucp" protocol.

As for Connection reliability, MNP5 (MNP4) (throgh the fax modem) and ensuring computer had a 16550 UART made wonders. (And of course, not turning on "call waiting" feature). And Kermit is very reliable (but very slow) file transfers; Z-Modem was a real lift. And more user friendly as it started download automatically.

I Think that Swedish computer had 640 floppies natively (and, possibly, when formatting for PC it had 720 KB). At least on PC, going higher than 720 KB probably wasn't recommended (more tracks than than most floppy drives were made for using FD disks).

As for that "Net" browser I Think you mean Netscape. (Wasn't it a paid version in the beginning?) When first I Heard about of it and I saw someone used it the Company I worked for had a fixed network, and I Think I used NT3.5 by then and played with the microsoft web server for NT 3.51. The one that also had support for Gopher. And, ah right, "OS/2 Warp" came with internet browser... Catch (that i realized later) was that the TCP stack was only for dialup (modem). On a normal wired network you had to pay for tcp/ip.

I never used it, but back in those Days a popular internet program was "trumpet". And in the early Days, Before there were Commercial ISPs there was the other program "slirp" I Think it was.

 

[CozMoDan]

Oh you must have beat me to it then. I've had my first computer back in say 1984 or so also, but it was a typical "Home computer", with printer and cassette player (floppy drives were expensive for that computer). THought it could technically work as a terminal as it had no harddrive you had to load serial driver (computer had no UART)/terminal program from a cassette. I didn't bother with it. But if you did you could use it to connect to internet (as a terminal).

Back in 1986 or so I got a computer with harddrive (an odd Swedish made one), and it was first then I begun with modems, it was a 1200 baud Telia modem ("heath comm") that probably Wold survive a tank. As that computer came with "Kermit" it was the program I used...

My first "online" internet Connection was through dialup (vt100) using "Lynx" as a browser (launched at remote computer). And when I begun my first job, the email was fetched using dialup and the "uucp" protocol.

As for Connection reliability, MNP5 (MNP4) (throgh the fax modem) and ensuring computer had a 16550 UART made wonders. (And of course, not turning on "call waiting" feature). And Kermit is very reliable (but very slow) file transfers; Z-Modem was a real lift. And more user friendly as it started download automatically.

I Think that Swedish computer had 640 floppies natively (and, possibly, when formatting for PC it had 720 KB). At least on PC, going higher than 720 KB probably wasn't recommended (more tracks than than most floppy drives were made for using FD disks).

As for that "Net" browser I Think you mean Netscape. (Wasn't it a paid version in the beginning?) When first I Heard about of it and I saw someone used it the Company I worked for had a fixed network, and I Think I used NT3.5 by then and played with the microsoft web server for NT 3.51. The one that also had support for Gopher. And, ah right, "OS/2 Warp" came with internet browser... Catch (that i realized later) was that the TCP stack was only for dialup (modem). On a normal wired network you had to pay for tcp/ip.

I never used it, but back in those Days a popular internet program was "trumpet". And in the early Days, Before there were Commercial ISPs there was the other program "slirp" I Think it was.

Well you were in it a at a higher level than I. I was software but we had a "Geek" that was hardware and very good and I listen to him and then ask him to help me as I had no clue what he was talking about . A good friend of mine was a real programmer whom I went to work for later in life and he use assembly langue. There was really no basic like now. I used northstar basic when I started programming. Just a side note in about 85-86 I was over at his house and he told me he could get a 80 meg that is MEG hard drive for 10K USD and I was trying to figure how I was going to come up with 10 grand. A couple of years later I paid $659 USD for 16 megs , here again MEGS, of internal memory for my 486.

BTW way you are right my floppies were 640K, 728K came later as I now recall, I think hehe.

How things have changed.

 

[Chazlow]

He has not answered here but we had a PM conversation and he said he finally got it to run but crashed every 3 or 4 minutes. That was a couple of days ago and I have not heard from him since. But clearly it has nothing to do with the connection. As I said before why would all of a sudden you have connection problems ? When having a problem the connection is about the last thing I would check because that would affect almost everything and I think one would notice that long before starting the game, like e-mail, web sites etc.

Agree with above.

Try some of these

- disable streaming audio
- set multiple thread count to 4
- check you have the required VC distro of whatever year installed as win 10 has a bunch of compatability probs if these libraries are available.
- make sure you have provided absolute admin access when installing EU, thereafter only an grant control for updates
- check localhosts file for any errant IP assignments

I think the VC distro is the main culprit.

GL.

 

[SpikeBlack]

I'm sure that support is mentioned it, but just in case - since it's a fresh Windows installation, make sure that all these ports are opened in the Windows Firewall.

Whoever wrote those notes on the MA site needs a needs lessons in networking protocols, some of those should definitely not be port forwarded from a router and in fact it's pointless with passive ftp. 20 and 21 are the destination ports for a ftp server not the source ports of a ftp client unless it's been been implemented extremely poorly.

 

[Eli]

I think the first thing that EU tries to do is hit IE for refresh. Something there?

Or... uh admin mode. Admin mode fixes everything? Admin mode on the installation, the launch, everything.

 

[zeusrocktropian]

Surprised I haven't seen compatibility mode to win 7. What are you experiencing happens to me after every VU. Just right click on your shortcut and set compatibility mode to win 7 and after vu or when it happens again switch back to no compatibility mode. Worked for me.

Cheers.

 

[Korin Dante MDe]

Make sure your ISP provides a static that remains stable till the modem is restarted. Happened with a ISP with me and then I had to send them request for making proper changes in their system to play this game.

 

[aia]

Long time ago (well a few years), I wonder if there wasn't someone else who had problem with disconnects after say each 3 minutes.

If I recall right, he also ran bittorrent software on his computer. (It doesn't have to be on same computer; it could be on any computer in the "inside" of the network/"router".)

How Bittorrent could interfere with entropia: Let's say you start to download 10 files. Each of the files are availible from, say, 2 people. And, each of *your* files (ie started downloads) will be shared to 2 people. This means you will have, uh, 10*2*2 (40) Connections. Add more files, and more sources and destinations and it will add up.

The problem here is, a modern "router"/firewall will have a Connection table. When you connect to a host on the internet, the "router" will make a note of which of the IP addresses on the inside has connected to which IP address on the outside, and which port on the inside is connected to which port on the remote computer. This Connection list is needed to be able to have several computers on the inside sharing same IP address on the outside and be able to connect at the same time - consider both computer A and computer B, at the same time, is connected to the windowsupdate server at same remote port (80); the list makes sure that the right computer on the inside gets the response that *that* computer is expecting and not Everything that the remote web server sends. (This list can also be used to make sure that computers on the internet, that has no Connection according to the list, can't send data to the computers on the inside simply by trying to send data to the temporarily opened ports and make sure that a remote computer doesn't try to send data beforeo the TCP Connection is properly opened aka "stateful inspection").

The problem here is that that the size of that list, that is kept in RAM of the "router", can be limited to, say, 1024 entries. 1024 entries is usually more than enough (eg 512 opened web pages from the inside at same time); but if someone on the inside is using a Connection-hungry program, this list can be depleted. And, with bad luck, if it happens the "router" can flush the entries that are used for Entropia, effectively blocking entropia traffic (as the "router" no longer knows which internal computer should receive data sent from entropia game server). Meanwhile, the torrent program seems to work normally. The torrent program will probably suffer also, but as it might have hundreds of Connections opened anyway, and that it can start up new Connections by itself, it's not noticable (for the bit torrent client it will just look as if one of the remote Machines just rebooted or something.)

So to sum it up, try to figure out if you have any Connection hungry software, like Bittorrent (could also be TOR node software or, well anything that opens up Connections by itself). Or if your computer either is under attack from some "hacker" (someone tries to open all ports to see whats' vulnerable in your network), or if your computer itself is infected by a worm trying to spread to random remote hosts.

If I remember right about the ports, the ones you needed to open "inbound" was because of some ancient streaming audio protocol, and the FTP ports are used to upload/save Beauty masks you've designed. Possibly also to upload customized ad-screens (ad screens with photos etc). You probably won't get disconnected by missing opening up those ports, but rather not get streaming audio and not being able to upload "customized content".

(Port 554 = "Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP)", port 30583 probably game setup, port 30584 probably game data; gamer friendly "router" probably automatically puts this in the Connection table - but here probably the problem lies if Connection table becomes full).