Hi Dudesses, and Dudes! I don't know if you remember me. But here is "the" (((my))) situation: - Empires will ALWAYS crash in something like half a minute or less, even in the main menu. I CANNOT JOIN GAMES ANYMORE for weeks and months :'( I am so sad. It is a 10 to 15 seconds crash. even in the mainmenu. there is no escape. It will crash also when I am a "fast clicker" and try to join a game... in the middle of the loading screen :/ It always crashes with a message related to ----error---- AppName: hl2.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: libcef.dll ModVer: 1.1025.1248.0 Offset: 00030220 ----error---- - Windows XP, average - good PC (I know I should upgrade to win7 or maybe 8 but ...) I reinstalled empires from scratch after removing/uninstalling it. I removed everything manualy before. It looks better (in the main menu) now but I cannot enjoy my favourite team-game anymore ... I have also to add that I had remove multiple files in different folders and I suspect there are some file-conflicts that may be responsible for issues that haunted me for years. So it is! FOR YEARS NOW! Like missing OK/Accept/Cancel buttons in the buy / team menus ... Can you IMAGINE how tollerant I was until now? No, you can't! But since then I had to reinstall everything because it does not work anymore... for months. and it's always the same error (like above). It started with the previous or the before-previous update Help! p.s.: I removed also everything related to source SDK's 2007-2011 or something. p.s.2: Now tell me what I want to know !!!
Strangely my 2.8.2 version of empires doesnt even have that file. But my backed up 2.7.0 does contain it. Few things to try. 1. Go ...steam\steamapps\common\Empires\bin and remove libcef.dll Start the game. If it doesnt help or doesnt start, verify files through steam and start again. --- 2. If the above dont work, try this just for testing. Go to the game properties and opt in to beta. Let it download and test the game. Thats just to try, since my beta install doesnt even contain libcef.dll...engine should be more updated, maybe it doesnt use it. If it doesnt work, opt out, let it download and try again. --- 3. If above doesnt work. Try using my libcef.dll, but I dont give much hope here as it should be the same as everyone elses. https://www.dropbox.com/s/stmnw14my2x9lc0/libcef.rar?dl=0 --- 4. Did little searching and one guy had problems while having Apple software installed on his PC. (long time ago) Uninstall it if you have it. It could also be some other software that is running in your background that could be conflicting with it. --- 5. Start the game and try to manage it into the options, go Video options and Advanced, Disable multicore rendering if you can. Another thing you might try is putting all video settings to lowest. --- Now I dont know how it currently is with Empires and windows XP. I know there were issues few recent updates back. Somebody here should know if everything works smoothly with XP and Empires. If you have any more detailed crashlogs, post them here along with your PC specs. The more details you post, the better.
Thank you for taking the time to post about the problem. I'm sorry to say that updating to windows 7 is the only permanent solution. The trouble is, Windows XP doesn't support some compiler options that we need for performance, and we don't have a system in place to allow us to build seperately for windows XP on the same steam branch. For 2.7.0, we released a seperate steam branch for windows XP players. Follow Neoony's step 2 to opt into windowsxptest instead of beta (I just took the password off, a couple of windows XP players have tested it and it fixed their problem). That should run and will continue to work until we release 2.8.X, which is not compatible with 2.7.X - we don't plan to continue supporting windows XP by making these extra builds so you probably won't get newer versions on the windowsxptest branch. As for "missing OK/Accept/Cancel" et alia, I hope you will post screenshots in seperate support threads when you get the game running again.
Thank you so much for your support !! == FIXED == 1. Step (1) works for me !!! I renamed the file to libcef.dll.orig just to be sure. 2. The main menu doesn't crash, downloading works. 3. All menus seem to be in order now (OK/Accept etc). This must have been related to some file conflicts. 4. I told it for years, but of course I will upgrade to Win7 "soon" ... 5. I test it ingame now. Results: strange "could not connect to VAC servers" error message after a few minutes, while there is no VAC enabled on the server ? 6. I follow the windowsxptest now
