dunc

Oh, and maybe (just to be sure), run the DX9 web setup again, maybe something got overwritten here during the CE update, who knows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

The crashdumps indicate a problem with Direct3D, so this is most likely NOT a language back issue. Since both 4.019 and 4.010 are crashing for you now, I suspect you have a GFX card driver problem. FYI, I'm running Win 10 15063 (aka "Creators Update") here for testing as well and all is fine, so it is not an issue tied to the Win 10 update itself. Maybe your automatic update settings have been changed, and some GFX driver has been installed "behind your back"? In any case, I'd check and re-install the GFX drivers. And also make sure NOT to run any "screen grabbers" or "overlay" or "beautifier" (ENB) etc...

Ah... your crashes look suspiciously like being related to the missing MS update we discussed in another thread. Can you confirm that you did not saw any error messages upon installing 4.006 that told you you were missing some Windows update? Just to sum things up for you in case you want to retry: - uninstall your VS2015 c++ redistributable, - download and install KB2999226 - download and install the VS2015 C++ redistributable again If that does not solve the issue, please comment on my two questions above. Thanks!

Two questions: a) In which path did you install Steel Beasts? b) What complete path is your "My Documents" folder? I'm trying to find out whether you have any non-ASCII characters in your path names. Thanks!

Actually, thanks for pointing that out, it's simply a bug. We did an overhaul to the timekeeper in SB a while ago, and here we simply query the wrong method to check for time drift. It has no consequences (as the "faulty" result will be compensated internally) other than the AAR (and debug log WARN) output. But, yup, it should be corrected, I'll take care of it. However, in the meantime, just ignore the output.

For SB 4.x only: 1) If you're a CLIENT, you don't need to forward/open ports in either IPv4 or IPv6. 2) If you're a HOST, you DO need to open/forward UDP ports 2300 and 2400 in your router/firewall. You don't need the whole range anymore (like in SB 3.x and older), only these two ports. Neither do you need TCP, you only need UDP. 3) You need to do this for the protocol you're actually using on your PC and SB: if you're using IPv4 in SB, you need to open/forward IPv4. If you're using IPv6 in SB, you need to open IPv6 (there is no forwarding in IPv6). 4) IPV4 and IPv6 don't mix and match in SB. It's either everyone in a network session on IPv4, or everyone on IPv6. 5) Stick with IPv4 by default for best results. IPv6 has only been implemented in addition to be future-proof. However, there is no actual need to use IPv6 if offered by your ISP, nor is there any advantage in using it. In fact, IPv6 uses slightly larger network messages and hence generates more network traffic. Hope this helps.

Please check here for a (possible) workaround: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/10909-cant-start-sb4-on-win10-simplified-chinese-os-with-crashdump/#comment-161875

Ugh. Looks like we "shot ourselves in the foot" here. Remember that we're preaching about "don't use file- or directory names with special characters!" all the time? Turns out we're actually distributing SB with some directory names with special characters... and this is causing SB to crash when running with a non-english non-unicode system locale. Hrm. Could you please try this as a workaround: With your system set to your usual Chinese non-unicode locale, navigate to your SB installation dir and check the "loc" folder. In there, remove all the folders with special or corrupt characters (e.g. "Español" or "Français"). Now try to start SB again. Please let us know whether this works or not, we'll adjust SB once we know that this is indeed the cause for the crashes. Thanks!

Ah... disregard my former statement. Turned out that the actual bug is something else, it simply manifested in the "boys/girls" units, but it can/will happen in other units as well (no need to go into the details, internal coding issues). So just coincidence. The actual fix will be part of the next patch.

Just FYI, for the SCE maintainer: We're investigating the crash of course, but for the time being: it seems that the crash is triggered when some of the "green/civillian" units are spawning, especially the "boys" and "girls". If you remove the boys and girls from the map (upper right corner, outside the main area), the crash no longer seems to happen. Anyway, we'll continue investigating the *actual* underlying reason, code-wise...

Amen to that.

The "funny" thing about the KB299926 update is... M$ has "updated" it a couple of times by now, and it seems that some "older" versions of that update don't "qualify" as proper prerequisite... go figure. If Windows insists that KB299926 is installed, but none of the other stuff works, my next step would have been to uninstall KB299926 again (you can do that via the normal "program" entry from the control panel, there should be a "show windows update" entry in there somewhere... and NO, they are of course NOT sorted by name...), then cleanup the windows update system (using steps 1 to 5 in my post here), and then re-run Windows update and try to make it find the "most recent" version of KB299926. Maybe that helps... I'm sorry for all that hassle, I really would appreciate if M$ would provide a VC2015 runtime which is either "self-contained" or does not have that stupid "universal runtime" dependency. Believe me, we already discussed ditching VC++2015 and going back to VC++2013 because if that BS... unfortunately, we're using newer C++11/14/17 features since a while that we would need to "downgrade" again, so we kept fingers crossed and hoped M$ would sort its stuff out eventually. So much for that...

Nice to know that we finally have "workflows" for Win7 and 8.1 and 10 that lead to success (leaving the Chinese language issue aside). It still bothers me that we are so completely dependent on having Windows 100% up2date. IMHO, there is no real technical reason for that, and MS simply tries to push everyone to install every single patch *just* to get a "lousy" VC++ runtime working properly... got to admit, I expected that for Win 10 (because MS confused a desktop OS with an always online and noone-bothers-about-security cellphone OS), but MS seems to backport "enhancements" to Win 7/8.1 quite aggressively. Would not be surprised if they eventually block all program installations which are not done via the "shiny" Win 10 appstore... <sarcasm>it worked for Android and iOS, so it has to work for Windows as well, right?</sarcasm>. Go figure...

Please see this thread: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/10594-cant-start-the-program

Good question, no idea. In theory, they should NOT be mandatory for anything. However, now that the dreaded "you really should update to Win 10!!!" nagging phase is over, the optional updates probably won't hurt. Personally, when I was still running Win7, I always installed the optional updates (until the Win10 thing started, then I basically reviewed every KB info before installing, and I blacklisted the Win10 update stuff). Sorry, the answer won't get any more specific, it's up to you. But of course, you can always start WITHOUT the optional updates, and if it does not work, try a 2nd time WITH optional updates....

The "DISM" command only works on Windows 8 and above. For Windows 7 users, it is mandatory that you install the KB2999226 patch before re-installing the VS2013/VS2015 runtimes. If you can not get the KB to install on Windows 7, the steps to "cleanup" the update system are a bit more difficult, unfortunately... however, I took the liberty of creating a "simple" skript file that does all the necessary changes automatically (if you're brave enough to trust me --- but I take *no* responsibility if you experience difficulties!). It's attached here. So for Windows 7, please do the following steps: 1) Save the attached file (ResetWinUpdate.cmd) to some location, do NOT run it yet. 2) Close all running programs. Open the usual windows file explorer. Right-click on your C: drive, and select "Properties". In the "General" tab, select "Disk Cleanup". Once it stopped analyzing, click the "Cleanup system files" button in the lower left. Again, once it stops analyzing, check ALL checkboxes, especially the "Windows Update..." box. Confirm and wait until the cleanup has finished. This can take quite a while, maybe even 1h or more, so be patient! 3) Once the cleanup is finished, open an administrative command prompt, and navigate to the location where you saved the "ResetWinUpdate.cmd" file. Execute it by typing: ResetWinUpdate 4) Once it is done (you can ignore any errors you might see), reboot the system! Upon shutdown/startup, Windows will tell you that it performs some updates. 5) Once the system is up again, run Windows Update manually from the Control Panel. Install ALL updates. Reboot and repeat until NO updates are available anymore. 6) Install the above KB2999226 manually again, it should work now. 7) Reinstall (uninstall & install) the VC++2013/2015 libraries. I keep fingers crossed now, it seems MS has provided us with quite a "surprise menu" here... ResetWinUpdate.cmd

Please check out this thread, the issue has been covered there already in detail: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/10594-cant-start-the-program/ Thanks!

Please check out the thread here, there is a Chinese Windows 10 1607 user in there (Miki) who had the exact same problem, and we were able to solve it by switching BOTH the display language AND the non-unicode language to English: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/10594-cant-start-the-program/ And you still need to perform the VC++ redist installations, it's all described in the thread above. If you followed all these steps and still can not solve the problem, please post again.

For those of you where the KB update won't install or "keeps looking forever", especially on Win 10 v1607: Maybe verifying the windows component store will help. 1) Open an administrative command prompt (open the start menu, "all apps", "windows system", then right-click on "command prompt", select "more" and then "run as administrator") and enter: sfc /scannow This will simply ensure that the windows components are ok, it will find and fix corrupt/outdated files by verifying against a LOCAL repository. 2) Again, at the administrative command prompt, enter: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth This will make a more exhaustive check which will verify your local files against the current MS versions. If the update system is in any way corrupt, it will be repaired after these steps. Don't forget to reboot! After that, re-install the VC++ 2013/2015 runtimes (first uninstall, then install). If that does still not help, I'm out of options for the newer Win10 versions. As stated, I have configured my system to "defer upgrades", i.e. while i get security updates, i do not get feature updates straight away, but only after a couple of months (when it is clear that the new features did not break anything or when they have been fixed properly). This is an option that is by default only available for Win 10 PRO users. In Win 10 HOME, that option is not exposed. However, you can use tools like O&O ShutUp10 to make those "hidden" selections for you. The forced feature upgrades for Win 10 HOME users will be quite tricky for all of us in the future... (talking about NEW stuff here, not about SECURITY updates, of course). Last not least, the language thing... Miki, did you HAVE to perform both steps 1 AND 2 in order to play SB 4.0? Or is step 1 enough already? I need to know that exactly, so I can try to setup a virtual machine environment for further testing and patching. Thanks!

The "my documents" folder does not have to be on the C: drive. You can actually instruct Windows to move it to a different location. All programs will honor this, Steel Beasts included. Just google for "move my documents". Anyway, you will still have a bunch of mandatory data (maps, default scenarios etc., but no "custom" data) in the (usually hidden) C:\ProgramData directory, subdir "eSim Games". SB relies on this specific location, so you can not move this... However, the Windows NTFS file system comes with a concept of "symbolic links" or "junctions". These are basically "shortcuts" for directories, which look like real directories, but actually point to somewhere else, even different drives. So what you *could* do is: - copy the whole "C:\ProgramData\eSim Games" directory to a location/drive of your choice - delete the original "C:\ProgramData\eSim Games" directory - create a "junction" at the original location to point to the new location by opening an administrative command prompt, go to "C:\ProgramData", and then type: mklink /j "eSim Games" <new location> ...where <new location> is wherever you copied the directory to, including quotes, so e.g. "D:\SomeData\eSim Games" Now you will have a directory at C:\ProgramData\eSim Games which looks like a normal dir, but instead everything is "rerouted" to your new location. This is completely transparent for Steel Beasts, it can not tell a difference. Disclaimer: this is NOT an officially supported scenario. Do so at your own risk.

Nice! Good to hear that we were on the right track for the original problem after all. Miki, I was not aware that you are using a Chinese(?) version of Windows. Can you try two things, please?: 1) make sure that the "non-unicode" language for Windows is set to ENGLISH (this will not affect your Windows language at all, only non-unicode aware programs - like Steel Beasts) and then reboot and re-test SB. The steps required are described here: http://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/change-system-locale-in-windows-10.html 2) if (1) does not work, can you temporarily switch your Windows language to English completely for testing? The steps required are described here: http://www.howtogeek.com/232659/how-to-change-the-display-language-in-windows-10/ Again, these changes should only be for temporary testing. If the result is still negative, we can at least be sure that there is no weird codepage dependency here... Thanks!

Just to clarify: You tried using a) Windows 8.1, but without updates (which is not ok, you HAVE to have all updates installed) b) Window 10 version 1607, which is the "anniversary update" and which is also still riddled with bugs (just google for "windows 10 anniversary update issues") Sigh... if we're "lucky", these are purely MS issues. I would like to hear feedback from other ppl running Win 10 1607 (how to check? open a command prompt and enter "winver"). However, right now, if you still have access to Win 8.1, try it WITH updates, please. Thanks.

Miki, the crashdumps show your windows DLLs all at version 6.3.9600.17031 or below. Which means this is a "naked" Windows 8.1 installation *without* any of the prerequisite updates listed in the KB article. As stated in the MS error report above, in such a scenario, the KB will show as "installed" while it is indeed FAILED to install. So, please: run windows update and install ALL available updates! You may need to repeat this a couple of times until no more updates are available. If you are convinced that your Windows is already up to date, let me tell you that the dump shows that it is indeed NOT the case. So you may want to check your system health upfront (e.g. by using an admin command prompt and running "sfc /scannow", and in addition maybe even repair the win 8.1 component store by using some of the steps described here: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/26512-dism-fixing-component-store-corruption-windows-8-a.html ) THEN try re-installing (uninstall & install) the VC++2015 runtimes again.

So that's a DIFFERENT issue than described by the OP. We need to be careful with these things, because we'll just create confusion for everyone if they describe the "same" issue - which it is not. So, can you check out your DebugLog.txt file for error entries? It is in <Documents>\eSim Games\Steel Beasts\logs

Anyway: for non-Win10 systems, installing the KB linked by me above *does* fix this DLL issue for other programs. I just noticed that the KB link lists prerequisites, so you might want to make sure that you actually have these installed before installing the KB (and then the VC++ runtime again): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2999226#bookmark-prerequisites