Ok, so I pre-ordered CNC4. I have pre-ordered every CNC game (except for RA3:Uprising because its digital delivery only and wasn’t available from any of the providers I like, e.g. Steam) lately such as CNC3, CNC3:Kanes Wrath and RA3. CNC4 wasn’t an exception. I enjoy the storyline so I don’t mind paying for it upfront and playing it. I also like RTS as a game style as well so it helps. I had the CNC4 Beta but it wasn’t working, I couldn’t work out why and no error messages appeared. There wasn’t anything in the debug logs to help me out either and at the time I didn’t have the spare time to work out what the problem was and file a bug report.

So CNC4 came in a few days ago, earlier because someone else managed to sell theirs earlier or something. Again, I had assignments and other stuff to do so I only tried to get it installed last night. The game installs fine without error. I go to launch it and the splash screen comes up, disappears, the CNC4.exe file sits in memory consuming around 30MB (it varies so it is doing something) and eventually I get an error message:

It looks like it can’t find something and bails out. Not sure what it can’t find or why but it can’t.

So I go to EA Support and file the following with the error dialog screenshot attached:

Starting the game the splash screen disappears and then nothing happens. After a few minutes of sitting around at 30MB of memory usage the attached dialog appears.

I then after digging around saw some instructions about dxdiag in notes, so I fire up dxdiag, hit “Save all information” and attach the resulting file with the follow message:

Attached dxdiag details.

I was having issues during the beta that I couldn’t spend enough time to resolve. I have fully uninstalled the CNC4 beta though.

These are time stamped at 5:41am and 5:43am, presumably PST (it was late at night AEST). EA promise 24 hour turn around and sure enough at 3pm on the dot I get this response:

Hi,

Thank you for contacting EA customer support.

We do apologize for the inconvenience you’re experiencing with the game.

Are you getting any error messages?

Please accomplish the following before launching the game:

1. Empty your Temp folder to prevent file conflicts. Click here for steps on emptying your Temp folder:
http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=10705

2. Please end all background tasks to prevent conflicts with other programs. Click here for steps on ending background tasks:
http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=10700

If the trouble still persists, please send us a copy of your system information which is taken from the DXDIAG program. To do this:

1) Go to Start -> Run.
2) In the box, type the following: dxdiag
3) Click ‘OK’
4) Click the ‘Save All Information’ button on the first screen of the application.
5) Then on top of the ‘Save As’ box that pops up, select Desktop (if it’s not set to save there already), then click Save.
6) Finally, attach the dxdiag.txt to your email reply.

Once we get the Dxdiag, we’ll take a look and let you know what to do from there.

If there is anything else we can help you with, please do let us know.

Thanks,

Andrews.
EA Online Support

I’m rather annoyed, and I’ve replied as follows:

Hi,

Thank you for not reading.

Don’t apologise for the inconvenience of the game not starting without reading the question or supplied information.

Yes a dialog does appear suggesting that something is valid. I’m not sure what as it isn’t that descriptive but it has a handy backtrace. That is attached already.

Removing the files in the temp folder shouldn’t make a difference as the backtrace is suggesting the file isn’t valid or potentially missing. Deleting stuff won’t make it reappear.

Stopping any background tasks will again not achieve anything as it is failing to launch something. All of my other EA games including every other single CNC game (except for RA3:Uprising because it was online only and I like having a disc even if you don’t) appear to be working fine. Even so the error message is indicating that something isn’t a valid Win32 application which suggests something filesystem related.

I have sent you the dxdiag for your reference as well as the error messsage screen shot in PNG format. As a developer I don’t believe the error is caused by either of your causes and could you please just look at the information so we can progress in fixing this problem instead of scripted support.

Cheers,

Sam

I went to reply and put that in and it sent me to a login dialog box where I put my credentials in a few times and got nowhere. Went to the root of the site and it had authenticated me. What is going on? Anyway, I had a copy for this blog so I went back to the support issue and replied with this again. 5:09pm.

Hopefully I’ll get someone responding without a copy and paste script.