I´m really frustrated. I can´t run vassal since two months ago, and don´t know what caused the problem. I´ve tried everything I´m able: uninstall and reinstall java, actualize vassal version to 3.1.2, etc.

I have Vista-64 and have been using vassal without any problem until this rare incident occur.

I suspect some kind of problem with windows registry (or library?), but can´t detect the real problem as I´m a newbie user.

Let´s see if you can help me someway, or I´ll have to call, and pay, a software assistant .

The Vassal “error log” is this:

1237805495820 1671650282 – Starting
1237805495820 1671650282 – OS Windows Vista
1237805495820 1671650282 – Java version 1.6.0_12
1237805495820 1671650282 – VASSAL version 3.1.2
1237805495820 1671650282 – Manager

Java´s extracted “bug report”, without the process, is the following:

An unexpected error has been detected by Java Runtime Environment:

EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x692a8f50, pid=5912, tid=5296

Java VM: Java HotSpot™ Client VM (11.2-b01 mixed mode, sharing windows-x86)

Problematic frame:

C [atiumdag.dll+0x78f50]

--------------- T H R E A D ---------------
Current thread (0x04c2ec00): JavaThread “AWT-Windows” daemon [_thread_in_native, id=5296, stack(0x04f30000,0x04f80000)]
siginfo: ExceptionCode=0xc0000005, reading address 0x0000000a
Registers:
EAX=0x00000000, EBX=0x0723d718, ECX=0x06f75b58, EDX=0x06f70c54
ESP=0x04f7eee0, EBP=0x06f70c20, ESI=0x00000006, EDI=0x00000038
EIP=0x692a8f50, EFLAGS=0x00010206
Top of Stack: (sp=0x04f7eee0)
0x04f7eee0: 00000000 00000000 0723723c 07238a78
0x04f7eef0: 051ffb40 000000c0 00000007 06f75b58
0x04f7ef00: 00000004 00000002 00000040 06f70c54
0x04f7ef10: 00000000 06f70c20 06f73b40 00000000
0x04f7ef20: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000008
0x04f7ef30: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
0x04f7ef40: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
0x04f7ef50: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
Instructions: (pc=0x692a8f50)
0x692a8f40: 84 2b ff ff ff 8b 54 24 2c 8b 32 85 f6 74 3e 90
0x692a8f50: 8b 46 04 8b 93 20 04 00 00 8b 36 8b c8 81 e1 ff

Stack: [0x04f30000,0x04f80000], sp=0x04f7eee0, free space=315k
Native frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code, C=native code)
C [atiumdag.dll+0x78f50]
Java frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code)
j sun.awt.windows.WToolkit.eventLoop()V+0
j sun.awt.windows.WToolkit.run()V+69
j java.lang.Thread.run()V+11
v ~StubRoutines::call_stub

Thanks in advance,
Luis

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Thus spake luisincro:

One thing I can tell you for certain is that this is not a bug in VASSAL;
what you’re seeing is a JVM crash.

The native code where the crash is occurring is atiumdag.dll, which I
suspect has something to do with your video driver. Do you have an ATI
video card? Are your drivers current?

–
J.

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It would appear that there’s something wrong with your video driver. Have you upgraded anything recently?

I don’t really know how to solve your problem, but the library in question is that of your ATI video card. It’s known that Java doesn’t always play nice with accelerated video.

There may be associated problems discussed here:

http://www.vassalengine.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1748

and here

http://www.vassalengine.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1789

Anyone else?

• M.

2009/3/23 luisincro <sincrobuster@yahoo.es (sincrobuster@yahoo.es)>

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Thanks Michael:
I don´t think there´s something intrinsically wrong with my ATI video card. I´ve never upgraded it since its installation (nor changed any configuration).

The strange thing is that I´ve been using vassal without any problem during almost 1 year, with this same system and Vcard configuration.

May be a sudden disfunction of Direct X?. Or a problem with JRE?.
What makes me think so, is reading the following lines on Java´s report:

Dynamic libraries:
0x00400000 - 0x00424000 C:Program FilesJavajre6launch4j-tmpVASSAL.exe
0x776c0000 - 0x777e7000 C:Windowssystem32ntdll.dll
0x767f0000 - 0x768cb000 C:Windowssystem32kernel32.dll
(…)

Seems like there´s something wrong in JRE, or with dll.files?.

Luis

— El lun, 23/3/09, Michael Kiefte mkiefte@dal.ca escribió:

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Thus spake luisincro:

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the card. If you’ve never
updated your video drivers, then this is very likely to be part of the
problem.

When exactly does the crash happen for you? Are you able to load a module
and get to the Preferences dialog before it happens? If so, then you should
try turning off D3D in the preferences. If not, let me know and I’ll make
a build for you to test which has D3D off by default.

This is not strange if you updated Java recently. Java 1.6.0_11 has
Direct3D enabled by default, which is probably contributing to your problem.

–
J.

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2009/3/23 luisincro <sincrobuster@yahoo.es (sincrobuster@yahoo.es)>

Windows has a habit of installing things without you really knowing. Just about anything could have happened.

Combination of all of the above, really. Or rather, they’re not playing well together.

Perhaps someone can suggest how to disable D3D entirely within Java?

One thing we should do in the future is have a human-readable Preferences file. I want to be able to suggest editing it by hand, but that’s not going to happen presently. How can we get around this before a module is loaded?

• M.

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when you start a module, the default loading is with a module wizard, until you turn it off. This would be the best place for a user to step through the wizard setting all their preferences / overriding the suggested defaults before the module actually launches

From: Michael Kiefte mkiefte@dal.ca
To: VASSAL Engine Forums Mailing List messages@forums.vassalengine.org
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 8:37:29 AM
Subject: Re: Can´t run vassal

2009/3/23 luisincro <sincrobuster@yahoo.es (sincrobuster@yahoo.es)>

Windows has a habit of installing things without you really knowing. Just about anything could have happened.

Combination of all of the above, really. Or rather, they’re not playing well together.

Perhaps someone can suggest how to disable D3D entirely within Java?

One thing we should do in the future is have a human-readable Preferences file. I want to be able to suggest editing it by hand, but that’s not going to happen presently. How can we get around this before a module is loaded?

• M.

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Thus spake Michael Kiefte:

It will be simpler for me to do a build which has D3D disabled by default,
as I think we’ll want that for 3.1.3 anyway. I hope that Sun is doing
something about all of the problems with D3D support so that we subsequent
updates of Java 6 are better than 11 and 12.

I support this fully. However, it also makes me want to scream, because the
reason we have a non-functional trunk right now is due to the work I did
in factoring read-write access for ZIP files out of ArchiveWriter—and part
of the reason for that was to get the code for reading and writing
Preferences to stop depending on ArchiveWriter! ARGH!

See above. I’ll make a D3D-disabled build tonight which we can test.

–
J.

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Thus spake Timothy Mccarron:

That depends on getting to the wizard before VASSAL crashes. My suspicion
is that VASSAL is crashing before he even has a chance to load a module.

–
J.

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<<>>.

That´s

— El lun, 23/3/09, Joel Uckelman uckelman@nomic.net escribió:

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Thus spake luisincro:

I think you were cut off mid-sentence…

–
J.

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is that VASSAL is crashing before he even has a chance to load a module.>>>

That´s exactly what happens. Vassal crashes even before opening the first main frame. No option to select configuration inside the program.

— El lun, 23/3/09, Joel Uckelman uckelman@nomic.net escribió:

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Thus spake luisincro:

Definitely check whether there are newer drivers for your video card, then.

–
J.

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<<Definitely check whether there are newer drivers for your video card, then.>>

Ok, Joel. I´ll check new drivers for my ATI card. Let´s see if this is the damn problem.

Thanks and regards.

— El lun, 23/3/09, Joel Uckelman uckelman@nomic.net escribió:

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Not that this has anything to do with what your problem is but just tonight I had a serious problem with my Vassal and it definitely was some kind of video conflict because the screen started having artifacts all over it – even after Vassal crashed and was gone. Then my computer crashed. I got my computer started again (I had to restore!) and tried to resolve the problem by updating my drivers. That seemed to solve the computer’s problem but Vassal would not start. I uninstalled and reinstalled vassal and it still would not start. I clicked on the icon and the clock started to spin (all this is in Vista) but nothing ever happened. I tried this again and same result. I tried updating Java – it failed to update. In the end, I had to uninstall Java and all the updates I had made to it, then reinstall it fresh. THEN Vassal started working again and all seems fine. Was it Vassal? Video drivers? Or Java?

Thus spake “MadSeason”:

Do you mean that there was an update, but it failed to install, or just that
there was no update?

–
J.

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Thus spake Joel Uckelman:

First, were you able to update your video drivers? Did that help?

Second:

I’ve realized that making a build which disables Direct3D completely is
more complex than I first thought, because the code we have for controlling
whether Direct3D is used applies to the Player and Editor only. But it’s
the Module Manager which is crashing for you.

You can turn off Direct3D for the Module Manager this way: Go to the
directory where VASSAL is installed (probaby solmething like
C:\Program Files\VASSAL). In the same directory as VASSAL.exe, create
a text file named VASSAL.l4j.ini containing the following line:

-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false

(Use a text editor to do this, e.g., notepad. Do NOT use a word processor
for this.) Once you’ve created this file, try running VASSAL. If you’ve
done this correctly and Direct3D was your problem, then the Module Manager
should start. From the Preferences in the Module Manager, you can turn off
Direct3D for the Player and Editor.

–
J.

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