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[Cogwheel]

Hello,

I'm having a trouble right after downloading the game. Once I unziped the file, the .exe won't launch the game. Instead the cursor just shows the usual loading circle on Windows 10. After a while, windows explorer doesn't respond and I'm forced to reset.

I tried running as an admin, moving the file to another directory, downloading the redistributable package, but so far no success.

I assume that can't be an uncommon problem, do you have any idea what to do?

[Kyzrati]

Welcome and sorry you're having this issue--you're actually the first one, so darn it's not a common report or something I can immediately give you a solution for :/

However, it's possible that you're running Cogmind from a directory path that contains non-ASCII characters (unicode, like a foreign language). As indicated in the install guide, that will prevent it from launching. Unfortunately the entire path and directory name must be English, so make sure that's the case here as well.

Failing that, after attempting to run the game it should have produced a run.log and/or crash.log text file in its main directory, and that might indicate any errors that it encountered on startup. You can attach that/those files here and I'll take a look at it to investigate.

And thanks for giving a list of what you've tried so far, as that's a good starting point in the search for a solution!

[Cogwheel]

Hi, thank you for your support!

it's possible that you're running Cogmind from a directory path that contains non-ASCII characters (unicode, like a foreign language). As indicated in the install guide, that will prevent it from launching. Unfortunately the entire path and directory name must be English, so make sure that's the case here as well.

Here is what I did :

- launched it with admin rights from my desktop.

- moved it to such a directory (the D:/), and launched it with admin rights.

- Dled the repackage, but my version was up to date apparently.

Failing that, after attempting to run the game it should have produced a run.log and/or crash.log text file in its main directory, and that might indicate any errors that it encountered on startup. You can attach that/those files here and I'll take a look at it to investigate.

It did not in fact.

[Kyzrati]

Argh, bad news then...

A spinning cursor and a Windows Explorer hang means it's likely something to do with your Windows setup (damn Win 10 :/). Cogmind itself is actually quite simple from a technical standpoint, and if there are no log files, then the game didn't actually even start... so my hands are tied on that end.

The best I can do in this case is help search for generic causes, since it looks like some people have been having similar trouble with various games and software in Win 10. (I don't use Win 10 myself--currently avoiding it like the plague, but I will no doubt have to get it one day...)

Just spent an hour Googling for possibilities, and the best I've come up with so far is that sometimes games can be run in windowed mode to start up properly when they won't otherwise. I'm skeptical of this solution with regards Cogmind, since it should have at least created a log file before getting to the fullscreen initialization point (unless you're not running as an admin, but you are). Worth a shot, though. Take the attached .cfg file and put it in your [Cogmind]/user/ directory. That should start it up in windowed mode (assuming it can start up at all).

Another possibility: It's got to be something on the Windows end, so maybe the necessary Windows DLLs were corrupted? Unlikely since you already attempted to install the redistributable and I imagine it checks for corruption on existing files, but this is the only other possibility I've found so far.

Dynamic-link library files have a file extension of .dll. These are collections of routines that are stored until a program uses them. If these files are corrupt or out of date, they can cause problems with your computer. To fix this problem, re-register the .dll files by:

    Follow this Official Microsoft Fix It Tool link
    Click Run in the File Download dialog box
    Follow the steps in the wizard

Note: This wizard may be in English only; however, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.

Probably unrelated: If you perchance have a High-DPI monitor, Cogmind still doesn't support those natively and requires a settings change, but that shouldn't cause it to fail startup, just cause it to not fit the screen (which can be resolved via Windows settings). So I doubt that's it.

Note: If you have no other computer to run it on, and this ends up not being solvable, I'm happy to refund your purchase!

Thanks for the help so far in being as clear as possible about what's going on

(Sorry for the non-rapid replies on this--you're active when I'm asleep on this side of the world )

[Cogwheel]

hi!

I tried your idea on windowed mode and put the .cfg file in the directory you indicated.

It works now! I guess that was indeed the problem. Except that I can't see my cursor!  But I guess that's still an improvement!

[Kyzrati]

Whew, well that's something at least. I've been waiting anxiously for a reply on this

Does still look like it's something about your particular Windows setup. I would hope this gets taken care of by MS because it's apparently affecting a number of games and we devs can't do anything about it...

Now... why can't you see your cursor?! I don't imagine you entered Cogmind's "keyboard mode" by accident? (F2 hides/shows the cursor.) Otherwise, that seems to be another side effect of this Win 10 issue :/ (again, not something that's happened before, to my knowledge).

Also, that earlier question: You don't have a high-DPI monitor, do you? I'm wondering if something MS did to Win 10 more recently has somehow worsened the DPI problem for non-compatible programs (since there is a way to address those problems via a setting, but it's pointless to do that unless you have one of those monitors).

[Cogwheel]

Err, would you believe it, I hit f2 and the cursor appears! 

So as far as I'm concerned everything seems alright. Tried the game a bit, I don't think there are any other issues.

My monitor isn't DPI, no.

[Kyzrati]

Woohoo! Glad that was it

And actually, only now do I realize that was my fault, since I gave you my config file, which I did edit, but forgot to turn on the cursor for you *facepalm* (I play without the mouse myself). Check the options menu (F1 > 4) and see if there are any others you might want to change.

My monitor isn't DPI, no.

Thanks for letting me know.

[Akhonji]

Bumping this one as I'm having the exact same issue as the fellow above. Running in Windows 10, go to run the newest version, and no dice. So far I've tried running the game in compatibility mode, adding the .cfg file to the \users\ directory, and running the FixIt DLL checker (which apparently isn't compatible with windows 10 ). As far as I can tell, cogmind.exe isn't even showing up in the processes in task manager, freezes explorer when I try to run it, and windows displays an error message about cogmind if I try to shut down after running it. The first time I tried running it, it warned me that it was an unknown file and prevented it from running unless I disabled whatever security measure, so that could be another sticking poing.

 Very frustrating, as it worked great under 7 and I love the game. Let me know if there's any other things you might want me to try!

[Kyzrati]

Agree on the frustrating

To my knowledge the majority of Win 10 users can run it just fine, and there's no reason it shouldn't work since internally Cogmind is an incredibly simple program that only uses native Windows drawing calls.

You have the latest Win 10 updates? I have confirmation from many players that it works for them on the current Insider Preview Builds of Win 10, as well as the latest slow-and-stable public Win 10.

(To anyone else who reads this thread: Are you having, or have you had, any troubles at all that you resolved yourself? Or does it work fine as reported elsewhere?)

It could have something to do with specific settings somewhere which I'm unaware of, or more likely the fact that as a new OS Win 10 still has issues that affect a minority of users of various software, completely at random (there are many such reports on the web, which is one reason I stick with Win 7 myself, but I can understand that some want/have to "upgrade" ).

Certainly the security warning is going to happen (that can even occur on Win 7 depending on your security settings), but that's because Cogmind is a standalone portable program that will try to edit its own file directory (rather than save things to your User directory), and Windows doesn't like that. (Although I hear future Windows might move towards supporting local directory edits as the default, which would be nice.) In any case, this is why I have to indicate in the install guide that Cogmind generally needs to be run as an administrator program with full privileges.

So with regard to your situation here, even with the solution Cogwheel used it's not working for you in any way? (E.g. windowed mode.) That would be even worse :/

Under Win 10 have you tried any previous versions of Cogmind? I don't imagine the results would be any different since nothing relevant has changed on that end, just curious.

[Akhonji]

Haven't tried the last one I had downloaded, which was v6. Also to confirm, I managed to disable smartscreen and still no dice there. I'll give the older version a shot when I get home today. I still find it super weird that it doesn't show up in normal processes. I did find that there's a copy of it frozen for each time I try to run when I look in the resource monitor, not taking any more or less resident memory no matter how long it runs.

I actually didn't want to upgrade to 10, but it upgraded overnight one evening and I've been trying to roll with it. If worse comes to worst, I'll just flatten and reinstall seven. I don't like windows deciding what I can and can't play.

By the way, thanks for your responsiveness! Let me know if you have any other ideas.

[Kyzrati]

It's important to me to solve any support problems, so I'm definitely paying close attention to this! Having confirmed with Win 10 users that this is apparently an isolated issue, my hands might be tied with it for now without more information given that it's apparently on Microsoft's end . (Or maybe some third-party software interference--that SmartScreen is still a suspect here.) I'm curious if at some point it will just start working again on these two machines after some Windows update, but that's a long shot.

Another related thing I thought of to check: Download REXPaint and see if you can run that. It uses the same engine as Cogmind, so I would expect the same results (it won't start up in fullscreen mode, but then neither does Cogmind as long as you're using the cfg file attached earlier). If it does work, that could provide some more evidence one way or another. (I do have one idea...)

Sorry for the inconvenience!

[Akhonji]

Raaagh! Rexpaint works awesomely.

Edit: Also, my windows is up to date. Just remembered to double check that. And alpha 6 still seems to work. I'd be going crazy if I didn't have my work laptop home with me to play on.

[Kyzrati]

Huh! Alpha 6 works on your Win 10? Well, not a single thing changed since then that would have any impact on this, so it's definitely something unique going on at your end. Knowing that REXPaint works, my latest guess is you have something active which has decided to prevent Cogmind from running without telling you.

One new possibility to explore: Download a fresh Alpha 9 to some new directory (basically start over the process), and use this new .cfg I've attached here. It both starts up in windowed mode and also turns off the version number check at the beginning, which attempts to use the internet to do so. (The only difference at all between REXPaint and Cogmind from an OS/security point of view is that the latter tries to connect to the internet for a moment.)

I'm not sure what your resolution is, so I've set it to create a 768p window.

(Good to know you've at least got that laptop for now )

[Akhonji]

Just a quick update: I downloaded this again to try and troubleshoot it today. And it randomly started working. Fickle chance!

Thanks for the responses, though! Back to the factory floor with me.

[Kyzrati]

Randomly working, ha... -_-

Thanks for letting me know, and good to hear!

(I'm here with my dad who was telling me last night his laptop updated itself to Win 10 and now several of his applications for work are simply broken, which obviously pissed him off.)

[Akhonji]

My desktop did the same thing to me- I'm lucky that it didn't break more than it did. Pro tip though - I think you can actually roll back to the old version of the OS. I'm sticking with it for now as it doesn't seem to have any trouble. Instructions at this link if you didn't already know!

http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-and-downgrade-to-windows-7-or-8.1/