Can´t play, HELP!!!

hilmar07

It was working fine one night and then when i went to sleep and woke up to play it, it didn´t work. I could log-in and select my character, but when the loading screen pops up and the loading bar is done the music plays but nothing on the screen changes. Sometimes i can get into the game, but with horrible lag. My friends play it with no problems.



My PC:

Intel (R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU.

3.00 GHz.

4GB RAM.

Windows Vista, 32-bit Operating System, Service Pack 1.

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series.



And I have a SpeedTouch router with 12MB/s.



 

Rokurgepta

I would suggest going to PlanetTr.com. It is the TR fansite and you are more likely to get good help for this issue there.

Sevenwind

They had a patch this morning. All this is after the bug fix patch this morning? I was able to log in fine.

Raltar

This is probably a long shot, but this sounds a like a problem I had once with Planetside.

Do you have any Saitek items installed on your computer that use software drivers? Stuff like a Saitek Keyboard or Joystick?

 

At any rate, consider yourself lucky and use this as an excuse to cancel your subscription. There are better MMOs out there to play and this may be god's way of giving you a shove in the right direction.

hilmar07

I just bought my computer and the only programs that have been on it are: Eve-Online, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Doom 3, Prey and WoW. I dont know the brand of my keyboard but my mouse is from Logitech.

Raltar

You would know if you had any Saitek products. So you probably don't.

Another long shot: Do you know if Prey installed SecuROM or any other copy protection software on your computer?

hilmar07

i dont know. Does Prey do that? if so how do i find out?

Raltar

Well, when I want to know if a game installs SecuROM I do a google search for the name of the game and "SecuRom" togeather. So in this case you would search for "Prey SecuROM" and see what comes up. I highly recommend you do this before you buy or install any game in the future, you will see why in just a second. Meanwhile I already did a google search for you so I can tell you that (sadly for you) Prey does indeed install SecuROM. I can't promise that this is the source of your problem, but SecuROM is seriously bad news for a lot of reasons so you should probably fix it anyway.

First off, you need to know what SecuROM is and why its bad. SecuROM does a lot of things, none of them good, some of which are fairly obvious and some of which SecuROM goes to great lengths to keep hidden from you. On the obvious side is that SecuROM limits your access to a program you legally own and paid for. It often requires you to revalidate your ownership of the game over the internet every few weeks. Sometimes it limits the number of times you can insall the game, which also often counts corrupted or broken installs, so you can lose access to the game forever if you have too much trouble getting it to install the first few attempts. Among some of the less obvious things it does is simply existing. You probably didn't even know SecuROM existed until just now, right? Thats because it installs itself without your knowledge or premission and then hides its presense on your system using the same methods that a rootkit would use. You remember the huge uproar a few years ago when Sony used rootkits on their music CDs and got into huge legal trouble over it? SecuROM is the same thing. The creators of SecuROM say their software isn't a rootkit... but if it looks like a rootkit, functions like a rootkit and quacks like a rootkit...

The real issue for you though is that SecuROM could be causing your problem with Tabula Rasa. SecuROM's "copy protection" scheme can cause conflicts with other programs on your computer. Plus, SecuROM does several things to hide itself and prevent you from removing it which can damage your computer, such as corrupting registry entries, creating hidden write-only folders and running itself in the background 24/7. And since it maintains constant contact to the internet whenever your computer is online hackers have been known to take advantage of it as a backdoor to access your computer. Any of these things could damage your system or cause you problems in getting your other games to run.

You may have also heard of StarForce. SecuROM is the same thing with the same problems, just made by a different company.

 

Here is the worst news of all: I have no idea how to get SecuROM off of your system. I had to remove it from mine after BioShock installed it without my premission, but I use windows XP. I don't know what you have to do in Vista, sadly because windows likes to completely alter their control panel layout with every new version of windows and often makes accessing advanced options more difficult.

Here were the insturctions I used to get rid of the Bioshock version of SecuROM:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/98241-13-remove-securom-malware-uninstalling-bioshock-demo

But since you have Vista and every verion of SecuROM is a little different, these instructions may not work for you. You could do a google search to see if you can find any specific instructions for Vista.

Keep in mind that if you do remove SecuROM you won't be able to use Prey anymore without it. But you CAN get around that. I can't tell you about it on these forums (I'm sure there is a rule aginst it) but it is possible. Just keep in mind that massive faceless corporate empires have no right to tell you how to use software you own and legally paid for on your own computer, least of all when it prevents you from using other software that doesn't even concern them.