Need the help of a windows XP Guru.

Its for the Game - "Kerbal Space Programme" and specifically its auto-updater.

Now the problem should be my side only as i am the only one that seems to have this problem. The devs are trying to resolve it for me but the troubleshooting they have suggested has not worked and the guys are busy developing the game. So i thought i would ask here (as i am pretty lacking upstairs in the computer knowledge department)

Things i know.

Install seems fine. Game runs as expected.
No log in issues as i can log into the installer and it starts doing its magic.
The installer stalls always at 99.4%
(from the devs) The patchlog from the games patcher stalls out at a place where it should be creating a temporary folder to store the downloaded files to patch from. This file is not being created and the patcher hangs at 99.4% indefinitely (computer left on over night).

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What i have done.

Deleted all existance of KSP.
Downloaded a new 14.2 zip and installed the game
Turned off all firewalls and there is no antivirus running.
As far as i can tell. Attributes of files and folders are not read only.
There is only one user account on this machine and its in full administrator rights (or so i think)
Extracted game to main c: and tried to patch (stuck at 99.4%)
Deleted again extracted to shared documents (different path on C:) and tried to patch (stuck at 99.4%)
Deleted again and extracted to seperate drive and tried to patch (stuck at 99.4%)
I have even manually created the "M2HPatcherTMP" folder within "KSP_win" and provided there was no syntax error unfortunately that did not help.

(i have no troubles autopatching other games like Star trek online and Fallen earth, battlestar galactica online)


Last correspondence from the devs



So my brain is not up to the challenge. Any guru's have any ideas i can try... Like i said, i seem to be the only one with this predicament... and i would so dearly love to loose more kerbals to deep space on the latest version.

Regards,

Bogusheadbox.

empty the temp folder using HDD clean up tool.

try alt tabbing to see if there isnt a prompt waiting for your input hiding behind another window. (some of my older games did this when it tried to install DX 5.1 or something).

Thanks skate. Did the steps, and unfortunately same result.

<taps fingers on forhead awaiting divine inspiration>

I have XP - I may try the DL + update and see what happens here.


Edit - Oops. Didn't know it had gone donationware.

Visit this link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/it-it/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

Process Monitor v3.0 can peek into the activity of a specified program (such as your patcher), and
it'll report you everthing that the observed program is doing.
When your patcher locks up, you should be able to see what it was last up to.

Read the program's documentation. There should be the possibility to dump the program activity
into a convenient text file. You could upload it to those devs - speaking of which, I'm surprised
that they didn't point you to Process Monitor themselves (Mark Russinovich's work is damn famous
among programmers).


One more thing.
I have no direct experience with Process Monitor. This program is new to me as well.
The thing is... It substitutes two separate utilities that I knew from the past: FileMon and RegMon.
In fact I was to point you to those two utilities. Good thing that I checked before sending you on a
wild goose chase...
FileMon and RegMon are officially retired, and Process Monitor substitutes them both. That's the deal.


I hope this helps.

PM sent

Thanks for the tips Bill. No change unfortunately. PM sent.

Hi comet,

Thanks for your post. The patcher has its own log creator advising of what has transpired. That is how we know it is stalling at creating the tmp file in order to patch.

unfortunately the devs have not had much troubles in this area so are a little short of ideas atm.

If its a permissions problem, i am at a loss as to change any settings that need a change.

try running it in safe mode. i doubt the Windows Installer will let you though,

Edit: boot in diagnostic mode (start, run, msconfig, Diagnostic mode. Apply, reboot)

so if any programs are conflicting or blocking it from continuing, those programs will be disabled.

I had some programs that would do the InstallVise pre-load, get to 99% and sit until i killed a process that was using the service it needed.

Might be a long shot but have you checked if the installer is not trying to create this folder in your environment TEMP or TMP folders? (default user path is 'Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Temp'). Or in the system environment TEMP (C:\WINDOWS\TEMP).

If so, you might want to set your TEMP and TMP environment variables to another folder (like C:\TEMP).

- Right click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced and, at the bottom of the window, select 'Environment Variables'.

Thanks guys for the help.

Though the problem with the patcher and my silly computer is unresolved, the devs have uploaded the latest version of the game to grab instead of patching. They will revisit this patching problem again when the the next update happens.

Thanks again for all the help. Much appreciated.

Bogus.