I have a fairly killer bug which nobody knows about.

[Louster]

SO I posted this on the general forum ages back:

Augh.
I started an acolyte. Got him up to level 5. Became a cleric.
Had to quit for 2 hour disconnect.
Reconnected.
Couldn't log into him.

It gets to where the 'loading' animation would normally be, and then just locks at a blank black screen. Never gets anywhere. This has happened too many times before. And customer service isn't. GetRight doesn't.

AM I ALONE?!?!??!?

Of course, it's happened again a little while ago.
The customer service people for both the European and the US version (I asked them for help out of desperation) have no suggestions further than 'DO YOU HAVE THE LATEST GRAPHICS DRIVERS??!??!' to which I reply 'Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' or something. And basically everything they suggest doesn't work.

Uhm. It affects only very specific characters. It doesn't affect them all at once. There doesn't seem to be any pattern involved in when or if the character stops working. It's not me just being impatient, I think, because I've left it running at the blank dead screen for up to 20 minutes in the past without anything happening at all.

And absolutely nobody that I've talked to has this problem. I had a friend try logging into the afflicted character from his computer (a totally different spec and connection type), and he did it fine. And after he'd logged out, I still couldn't get in. It's a little ridiculous. His graphics card is a ton worse and obscure than mine too, I think. Mine being a GeForce2 GTS and his being some weird thing that gives him terrible framerates.

SOMEBODY TELL ME THEY KNOW WHAT THE HELL I'M TALKING ABOUT PLEASE AGH. This is make-me-go-insane material I have here.

 

[Louster]

OKAY WELL I'm just gonna add a ton of useless irrelevant info to clarify things further, so that all both of you people that're reading this know exactly what it is that you can't help me with.

Uh.

Right so anyway. I've tried reinstalling. I've tried deleting the character files. I haven't tried re-downloading the entire contents of every patch so far, because to do so would kill me and my measly 56k modem. I haven't tried formatting, since this was a thing I had done not too long ago.
I connect through a LAN server, and am behind a strict firewall, neither of which I have any direct control over.
I have some kind of AMD CPU at 800mhz.
I have 384mb of RAM (512mb caused problems.)
I have no viruses on my computer!
I am unwell!
My dog is called Oliver!
Sometimes it rains outside.
It seems that sometimes I can log in to a character with this problem. With the latest of at least 5 or 6 characters who've had this happen to them, I was able to play for 2 or 3 hours after it intially failed logging in the first time. After that, it failed again. AND AFTER THAT IT FAILED LOTS OF AGAIN AHHAHAA.
And repeated attempts to log in don't help at all! Weird!

WELL ANYWHO I hope you all enjoy playing your nice characters! I will too! Oh! I mean I won't! Hehe!

 

[Louster]

There's always a delay (maybe you people with whizzzzzzzzzyyyyyyyyyy computers and not-crap connections don't notice it) before the blank screen gives way to the 'loading' animation. Yknow. Just before you actually get to play. OKAY??? And SOMEHOW I'm getting stuck at the blank screen and MAKE IT GO AWAY AAAA ITS NOT WORKING MY GAME HELP.

 

[Sortbane]

hmm.. never seen this bug before..

but..

What operating system do you have?
have you checked you connection using pingplotter/visual route?
have you tried to shut down all programs before starting daoc?
have you tried changing resolutions?
installed all the latest drivers for every application you have? (even your mouse can cause lots of trouble)
check the error dialog for your OS when it happens, could be a OS related bug..

can't think of anything else now.. but try to check out every possible solution (and even other solutions if you can find some..)

 

[Louster]

I appreciate the reply. Uhm, last night a guy at the customer service bit got into my character and zoned him into the capital city. This seemed to allow me to log in when I tried just now. Unfortunately I went linkdead like 10 minutes afterward, and have yet to try again.

1) Windows 98, first edition I guess.
2) No, but why would that be related to character-specific problems? I can connect fine to 3 or 4 other characters. It is definitely specific to certain characters.
3) Most of the time I run with winamp in the background and nothing else, but I have tried running nothing at all and it doesn't affect anything.
4) Yes, and it seemed to solve it one time, but that turned out to be just random luck - all other times it has had no effect.
5) As far as I know... I guess I'll check that.
6) There isn't an error dialog, if you mean one of those pop-up window things telling you "WINDOWS HAS PERFORMED STUPID IDIOT PLEASE USE SOMETHING ELSE OK."

Anywho. I'm off to find out whether or not Walter still works.

 

[Louster]

... and he does. Really weird. I guess I'll just have to get people to zone him every time this happens. Blom.

 

[Keri]

Did you try deleting your user.dat file? I remember in beta this was something we had to do a couple of times when there were login problems.

 

[Louster]

Yep, that was one of the things I tried.
But:

---------------------------------------------

Response (CS) - 04/30/2002 09:46 AM
Hello,

I logged with your character and took him to Jordheim as the zoning could solve your problem.

---------------------------------------------

Customer (ME!!!!!) - 05/01/2002 02:47 AM
That does seem to have helped - I was and still am able to log into Walter now. But am I going to need you to do this every time this happens?

---------------------------------------------

Response (CS) - 05/03/2002 02:57 PM
Hello,

This kind of problem should be VERY rare and is not likely to happen again as it is a problem with the recording of your position on our servers (often caused by a client crash). Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[old.seb1024]

your dog is called Oliver - nicely irrelivant m8

I reason this can happen is your firewall is quietly asking if something has permission to access the internet when it happens try pressing alt+y or alt+a to accept and say yes to answer the firewall's question. this has happened to me and works

 

[old.dittytwo]

I have had a similar problem
I solved it by upgrading the last thing on my mind
I had to upgrade the windows drivers for the motherboard chipset
not the bios though

hope this helps

 

[old.D-Stroya]

I've had the same problem. Happened with my level 5 accolyte. just went to camelot, chose to become a friar. left camelot, and it froze at the camelot exit, just before the loading screen appears. Now, whenever i try to use that character, i just get a black screen, and the loading screen doesn't appear. My other characters still work fine

 

[Louster]

Let me just reiterate this: My Problem Has Been Solved. By the customer service people. They solved my problem. If you have the same problem, tell them. Yep.

 

[old.D-Stroya]

I told them about the same time i made that last post, and my player was unstuck later that day