Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

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ronzito2
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Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

Post by ronzito2 »

After many uninstalls, reinstalls, reading of threads, etc., Bob2 still crashes immediately with the "English text has stopped working" message. I'm on Win7-32, upgrade from Vista Business, where Bob used to work. AMD Phenom X4, 2g installed ram, N-vidia 1050 ti, 4g. Here is the error message on launch:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Bob.exe
Application Version: 2.0.6.0
Application Timestamp: 4642147c
Fault Module Name: Bob.exe
Fault Module Version: 2.0.6.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4642147c
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000128d0
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

I was able to install on another Win7-32 that was relatively clean.

Thanks for any thoughts.

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PV
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Re: Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

Post by PV »

Any crash however vaguely related to BoB2 will give the
"english text" phrase, as that's the identifier that tags along
with the program (it may read something else if you run one of
the international versions).

Your machine should have no problem whatever with the old
2.06 version of BoB2, if you are running it without any background
activity. BoB2 is mainly CPU/memory limited; later versions (say post
v2.11) will be a big challenge for the 32 bit OS, requiring a kludge to
expand the readable RAM, and would want a maxed out 3GB RAM.

2.06 still had a few bugs, but it certainly didn't crash with any great
frequency, so the issue must be in your configuration. Even back at 2.06,
BoB2 needed lots of RAM space. It would probably want about 1.6 of the
2G you have, during challenging points in the 3D. So you need to run it
with a stripped down machine, don't have a lot of junk running in the
background.

There were a bunch of standard things to check for that could cause problems,
but it's been a while, and I forget them off the top of my head. One I remember
is, you must have a DirectX v9.0c, dated at least as recent as the patch level,
but for simplicity, as the last one was released around 2011, that's the one you
want (Dx 9.0c was first released around 2004, and microsoft in their infinite wisdom
continued to release updates for another 7 years without incrementing the name
of the file; meanwhile developer tools like Visual Studio were regularly updated to
assume the presence of the most current issue of 9.0c). If you look for Dx9.0c on
the microsoft site, the 2011 version will be what will be provided. You can check
to see if you already have it by looking in the windows\system32\ folder to see that
you have a series of files called d3dx9_nn.dll and nn should go (from 24, I think) to 43
if you're up to date. You will get a crash on entering 3D otherwise.

Next, it would be helpful to know exactly where the crash occurs - do you get to the
menu screens, or into the 3D, and if so how far.

Anyway, the first thing to do is the usual routine: you need to provide a crash report from
the BoB2 built-in debug system. You should find a file called crashlog.txt in the
BoB2 root folder. It grows steadily by appending to the bottom with each new
event, so it may be fairly large. The parts of interest are the first few lines of
output for the last few instances, hopefully all reading the same diagnosis. They
are found with a line starting with

------------ Begin of section written with bob.exe, Build/Rebuild...

and the relevant parts for inspection are 20-30 lines, ending with the first couple of
loaded module lines after "Module list: names, addresses, sizes, time sta...."

ronzito2
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Posts: 6
Joined: 03 Jul 2017, 09:28

Re: Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

Post by ronzito2 »

Many thanks for response! I've been through the "usual suspects" (Vista-Win7 compatibilty fix, etc.) and have verified D3DX9.0C. The program never opens, it goes to the "English text" message immediately upon launch from shortcut or bob.exe. There is no "crashlog.txt" in the Battle of Britain folder :? :? .

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PV
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Re: Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

Post by PV »

That sounds like a bad/broken install. If the program from
the same source loads and runs properly on another machine,
I could only suggest uninstalling and reinstalling. Pretty much
every problem that might arise due to system configuration
should appear only on entering the 3D.

...except, I remember now once there was a person who had a
machine that wouldn't accept a low res video setting, and before
configuring, BoB2 first tries to open in 1024x768 or 600x800 if it
doesn't recognize a higher res setting. The fix for this involved
editing a video setting in bdg.txt so the video was in a mode
the computer would accept on first loading, I think.

I suppose a bdg.txt file with an incompatible entry might be a problem,
if it were copied from one install to another, but a new install has no
bdg.txt until it exits once gracefully, so it uses default values until
then, when options are edited in the GUI, and are written to the new
bdg.txt on program exit.

Not sure what else I can suggest at the moment. There must be something
odd going on, as this is by no means a known problem.

ronzito2
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Re: Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

Post by ronzito2 »

I tried copying the bdg.txt file from the successful install, still no dice. The only thing I can think of now is that something in the Win7 installation is off, even though in every other respect it seems to be fine. Don't know if I'm up to re-installing Windows and all my other apps, but that may be the only way. Thanks again for your help.

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PV
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Re: Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

Post by PV »

Oh, one other possibility, but I think it only shows up
when you move to the selection screens for entering
the 3D, where the little videos appear. Some machines
had some sort of problem with those videos which resulted
in a crash. They can be turned off via the bdg.txt to
eliminate that possibility.

(And I presume you did your install without selecting any
compatibility mode, BoB2 runs only natively in W7). ...If
you've done a plain vanilla install, with BoB2 in a folder
off the root of the C drive, I can't think why it shouldn't
just fire up happily. ...You could always try downloading
the most recent compatible patch (v2.10 or 2.11 for a
W7-32 without 3+GB RAM and the RAM tweak) and see if
there was something hiding in the bugs we squashed getting
to there that was in your way, but it seems unlikely.

ronzito2
Airman Basic
Posts: 6
Joined: 03 Jul 2017, 09:28

Re: Anything new in BoB English text has stopped working?

Post by ronzito2 »

I either tried or have already done your suggestions--still no luck. My current plan is to install XP in dual boot because it seems it's something about the Win7 install that Bob doesn't like. Thanks again for your help, I'll update if I get results.

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