 I recently purchased a Codemasters game, DiRT, through Steam. I now wish I had not...
After the game had finished downloading, I fired it up only to have it crash immediately. I did the obvious thing such as drop back to a single monitor configuration, eliminate all background programs and some unnecessary services and tried again. FAIL. At this point, and quite unusually for me, I decided to contact Codemasters for support. So far this has proved to be a complete waste of time. In my opinion, their support is approaching something of a joke. It seems to follow a most basic problem-solving flow chart and has taken weeks of ongoing back and forth emails. It could even be automated given the level of intelligence shown by their support representatives. So here's the correspondence so far - I'm posting it here to demonstrate how I patronising I find their support and also just in case, by some slim chance, this helps someone else - after all it's taken me several weeks to get this far. For me, the game is still failing to run. As their suggestions get more and more desperate, you will my patience wearing increasingly thin. My main questions are a) Why not provide users with this checklist up-front, rather than ask these questions one by one over a period of many weeks and b) why can they (and indeed other games manufacturers) not provide some debug version of the game / or pass some argument to the executable which would write some diagnostic logs to aid problem solving? If you have had any experience with their support, better luck than me or if you have any suggestions, please get in touch!
Dear Codemasters, I bought DiRT yesterday (through Steam) and to my great disappointment it fails to load. I've spent some time searching for a solution but have not found a satisfactory one yet. Here are some things I've tried:
* Reboot * Disabling 2 of my 3 screens * Add some DLLs to System32 (d3dx9, xinput1_3) - this seemed to help. Previous to this, launching from Steam did nothing at all. Now I get a splash screen, a black screen and then this before going any further.
* I have tried applying the 1.2 patch d/l from Codemasters.
I would like to play this game. Please help! I am running Windows XP SP3, Intel Core2 6600 @ 2.4GHz, 2 x nVidia 8800 GTS. This is the first time I've had a problem of any kind on this rig.
I am happy to provide more debugging info as required.
Thanks in advance,
Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Can you run a file called DXDIAG from your hard disc and provide us with the information from this.
To do this with Windows XP click on START then RUN.
Now type DXDIAG and click OK.
For Windows Vista; click on Start and then start typing DXDIAG in the 'Start Search' box and then press Enter.
This will display the DirectX Diagnostics screen.
To send the information, simply click on the button "Save all information" and save it as a text file. All you need to do then is, attach the file you saved to the email with a description of the problem you were experiencing.
If you are unsure of this procedure, please see the link below for more detailed instructions:
http://www.codemasters.co.uk/codem/dxdiag.php
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02116922
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Rob
Codemasters Customer Services
Hello Rob!
Thanks for the response. Here is my DirectX diagnostics file. I believe everything is in order but it will be interesting to see if you spot anything useful!
-Greg
Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Can you try the following procedure). NOTE If you are using a software firewall, other than the Windows Firewall you should enable the Windows Firewall before connecting to the internet, after using this procedure.
a) Click on the Windows Start button and select 'Run'. In the 'open' box enter "msconfig" (without the speech marks). For Windows Vista, just enter the text in the search box.
b) In the general tab click on 'selective startup'
c) Now click on the startup tab (the last tab at the top of the msconfig screen) and UNtick everything EXCEPT 'systray' and 'scanregistry' (if they appear. If they do not, don’t worry).
d) Now close msconfig, you will be prompted to re-start your PC. Select 'Restart'
e) When the PC has re-booted, you will see a box with System Configuration Utility as its title. Tick the checkbox and then click on OK.
f) Now try the game again.
Let us know if this is successful.
More assistance on this procedure can be found here:
http://www.codemasters.com/codem/selective-startup.php
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02116922
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Dominic
Codemasters Customer Services
Hello again,
I've tried your suggestion but I get the same result. Here's the list of processes running when I attempt to load the game.
Again, the game crashes as before. N.b. ProcessExplorer was not running when I started the game. I tried a few times for good measure with the same result. Then I fired up SysInternals' FileMon. Attached is the output of all failed file reads by dirt.exe in case this is of any use to you.
So talk me through what you are thinking... correct me if I'm wrong - we have now ruled out misconfigured DX and interference by non-Windows software, right? What's up next? Or are you perchance just running through a problem solving flowchart? :) Thanks for your help.
-Greg
Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Try disabling the soundcard before running the game, just to see if it works (we're not suggesting you play without sound):
Right click on My Computer and select properties from the menu. Click on (Hardware) 'Device Manager', expand the 'Sound Video and Game Controllers' section and right-click on any entry that relates to the sound card (you can ignore any 'codec' entries) and select disable.
Do this for all sound card entries before pressing OK to exit the Device Manager. Restart the PC, if prompted
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02116922
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Jorn
Codemasters Customer Services
Hello Jorn.
Thanks for another suggestion. I was very disappointed to find that this made absolutely no difference.
-Greg
Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Try the following:
a Uninstall your graphics card drivers
b. Download and apply the driver cleaner from here...
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Driver-Sweeper-(Setup)_d1655.html
c. Reinstall the latest graphics card drivers
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02116922
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Jorn
Codemasters Customer Services
I will do this straight away and get back to you, Jorn.
May I enquire why you've not explorer the possibility of a debug version of DiRT? Some simple logging could pinpoint this problem much faster than me trying everything in the book.
-Greg
Still no good.
-Greg [attachment]
Hello, Any update on why the game is still not working please? I'm really itching to play....
-Greg
Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Try downloading and installing the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard.
If you have a VIA based motherboard you can download and install the latest Hyperion Pro pack from www.viaarena.com.
If you have an SIS chipset go to www.sis.com for the drivers. You can check exactly which model it is from this link:
http://download.sis.com/# (click on the identify your product link on the right hand side)
If you have an Intel chipset go to http:\\support.intel.com for the drivers. You can use Intel's Chipset Identification Utility, available here:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/sb/CS-009269.htm
If you have an AMD chipset go to www.amd.com for the drivers.
If you have an nForce motherboard download and install the latest unified drivers from www.nvidia.com
To find out which motherboard chipset you have. Right click on My Computer then go to Properties > (Hardware) > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controllers and check what the brand name is (Intel, AMD, Via Tech, SIS).
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02118452
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Jorn
Codemasters Customer Services
Hello Jorn,
It seems that you guys don't have clue what's wrong. If you think I'm reinstalling motherboard drivers you are sadly mistaken.
Instead of stabbing in the dark and trying to systematically replace rule out every driver on my system, why not provide me with a debug version of the application?? I simple stack trace could pin point the problem rather than have me reinstall everything.
If you could call me to discuss, I'd be very grateful. -Greg
OK after a lengthy process and several reboots I downloaded all the latest drivers available for my Asus P5N32-E SLI mobo. Many of the drivers were already up to date so I just uninstalled and reinstalled for good measure.
The same problem occurs when I run DiRT.
Time for a debug version of DiRT with some logging?
-Greg
Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Do you have hardware anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering turned on?
To check these settings go to Control Panel - Display - Settings - Advanced, then click on your graphics card tab. The anti-aliasing settings will appear here (under Performance / Quality settings or similar).
We recommend that you either set these to off or to "application controlled" / "application preference"
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02118452
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Jorn
Codemasters Customer Services
Thanks. This was already the case so I need to change nothing - meaning that the problem is **still** ongoing. Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Can you download and install the latest version of DirectX from www.microsoft.com/directx
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02118452
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Jorn
Codemasters Customer Services
You should have seen from my second email to you (On October 18th) that I already have the latest drivers installed. To be sure I downloaded and reinstalled.
-Greg
Thank you for submitting your recent request to Codemasters Customer Services concerning DiRT.
Have you installed the game to a compressed folder or drive?
To check whether your folder is compressed, open up "My Computer", right click on the folder and select properties then advanced. If the "Compress contents to save disk space" box is ticked, can you untick this? Can you also check this value for the subfolders?
If you need further assistance, please reply to this email and INCLUDE THIS LINE IN YOUR REPLY:-
{|CALLID|}=02124176
Or include the entire text of this email.
Kind regards
Rob
Codemasters Customer Services
NO I have no compressed folders or drives. Ever.
Next useless suggestion please!
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