demo works fine but actual retail vers won't run

[rapierdragon]

All I had to do was check the TnL thing in 3Danalyze and the demo ran perfectly for me.

So I went out and got a used copy of the game. It installs fine, but if I run it without the 3Danalyze I get the dirX9a/TnL error message. If I run it with the 3danalyze I don't get the message... instead the game just crashes back to desktop and I get a "3danalyze caused an error in kernel32.dll".

I'm re-downloading the demo now. I see in the retail game's config file there is a "enableretail levels" "1" line (guessing changing the 1 to 0 would make it think its the demo version and limit play).

I've tried the patches and I get the same kernel32.dll bug. I'm going to try copying the demo's .exe file over to the retail directory and see if it'll run or not.

Biggest annoyance of the game so far: when I told the demo to uninstalling it somehow managed to DELETE everything in my c:\programfiles\directX\ directory!!!!! (and I had dirX 9.1c installed, not the demo's slightly older 9.0a dirX version). Thank god win98se still ran and I was able to fool microsoft into installing dirX 9.1c into a temp directory (for some reason the registry kept saying 9.1c was STILL installed and the dirX setup would just jump the progress bar to 100% without actually installing any files).

[rapierdragon]

so I tried copying the demo .exe over the retail's .exe and I get a "caused an error in kernel32.dll" type message and it closes. Same if I try to copy the retail maps over into the demo's directory.

So I uninstalled both the demo and the retail versions (manually checked directories as empty and such), reinstalled the demo, and now the demo is giving the same kernel32.dll error that the retail was giving . (haven't been any hardware changes or driver changes or anything!)

This leaves me to believe that TRON 2.0 must be making some FUBAR regkey entries or using a foreign directory to hide a .dll or .exe or something... cause in my 10 years of learning/knowing thousands of the quarks of win98 I've never seen such strange behaviour from a game.

[TronFAQ]

Hey rapierdragon, welcome to the LDSO site.

Sorry to hear you're having problems with Tron 2.0. I've actually found it to be one of the less fussy games I've owned. I had a bit of a problem with the sound, back in the early days when the game was first released, but that ended up being due to nVidia's drivers not being up to snuff at the time. The issue was fixed in later drivers.

Since you e-mailed me about this as well, I think I'll follow up there.

[rapierdragon]

I did a total uninstall of both the demo and full version and then went hunting in the win98 registry (using regedit.exe) and sure enough, there were several registry entries/keys left for both the demo and full retail version.

After manually deleting all the reg entires/keys, and then re-installing, I managed to the get game to run fine with 3danalyze.

I can only guess that the retail version somehow detected the demo, copied some kind of registry entry or something, and that's what was causing the error.

So best advice for those reading who have this prob (full retail not working after demo played and working)... do a registry check! registry entries are left behind in a number of areas

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
/software/buena vista/tron 2.0 demo
/software/buena vista/tron 2.0
/software/tron 2.0 demo
/software/tron 2.0
/software/tron 2.0 retail

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
/software/buena vista/tron 2.0 demo
/software/buena vista/tron 2.0
/software/tron 2.0 demo
/software/tron 2.0
/software/tron 2.0 retail

oddly, after removing all the demo and full-vers keys (thereby allowing a "clean install" of the game (which then works fine)) I can find NO ENTRIES AT ALL. This leaves me to guess that all the above keys were created by the demo (why it would create 2 or 3 entires is beyond me). Then when the "full version" of the game goes to run the extra regkeys leftover from teh demo cause it to do all sorts of wierd stuff like run several .dll's from the demo, thereby confusing the game as to if its a demo or not and what version/language it is such and making it crash.

Which, all in all, just goes to further show that the people who made it don't give a damn about the quality of the PC version.

[xistence]

Yeah, those keys can only be made by the demo, because the full game will have a path like SOFTWARE/MONOLITH/TRON2.0... , so you're absolutely right.

[TRON.dll]

Hmmm, I originally had the game and the demo installed at the same time on a Windows XP computer...

Maybe you installed the full game into the same directory as the demo? That could've been the problem..