Worked once, now crashes on startup, what am I doing wrong? Thread - FUEL: REFUELED mod for FUEL

First off, thank for creating and actively supporting this mod, Fuel is an enormously promising game with a lot of issues, and it looks like you're doing a great job of addressing them.

I say that based on the 20 minutes or so I managed to play before running into this problem. I want to stress that I have followed the steps suggested in the troubleshooting FAQ, but am still having problems. Specifically:

1. I installed 15.4 per the video instructions and started the game. It worked fine, and was a rather dramatic improvement over the vanilla game. I played for a bit, then exited out. On exit, the game crashed.

2. I went to restart the game, and it crashed while loading. I went to the FAQ, saw that my save game might be the source of the problem, and removed it after backing it up elsewhere. Restarting the game, it again crashed on loading. I deactivated the optional mods I was using (gamepad remap was the only one), but again got the same crash. I rebooted, on a lark, but again got the same crash. I then slapped my forehead, realizing I hadn't installed the latest patch.

3. I deactivated the mod, installed patch 3 (this is done simply by overwriting the old MODS and REFUELED directories with those in the patch .zip, correct?), reactivated the mod, and started it. It again crashed on load. Damn.

4. I deactivated the mod to see if the vanilla game ran alright without it. It started up find. I then reactivated the mod, which again crashed on load.

4. I checked the forum and found the hotfix. I deactivated the mod, installed the hotfix, reactivated the mod, and tried again, same crash.

5. I deactivated the mod, deleted the mod directories, rebooted the system, reinstalled the mod (with patch) and tried again, same crash. I deactivated the mod and installed the hotfix again, then reactivated the mod. Same crash.

So, I'm at a loss. It's totally possible I'm doing something stupid, I suppose it's also possible I've gotten "lucky" and found a bug of some stripe. Suggestions for moving forward are very welcome.

Hi, could you install vanilla V15.4 + Patch #2 and let me know if it works to help narrow down the bug.

Regarding the game not starting with stock V15.4 that seems odd as there were no bugs found regarding the game not starting. What error / crash message are you experiencing? and where about's does it occur in the game startup sequence?

Hi Vetron, thanks for your response. I completely uninstalled the game and mod, completely reinstalled the game, installed 15.4 with no patches, and got the same crash. I then installed patch 2, and again got the same crash. I failed to mention earlier that I have the game on Steam, is that potentially the source of the problem?

The launcher comes up as normal, I hit "play" and the Fuel splash screen comes up with the circular progress indicator. It spins for a second or two, "loading..." appears in white in the lower left corner, and then the screen goes black. A couple of seconds later, I get the standard Windows XP error box, asking if I wish to send an error report to Microsoft. I can't easily capture a screenshot after the crash, but I dug the event back up through the event viewer, here's what that looks like:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 5/30/2011
Time: 7:14:31 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ERATOSTHENES
Description:
Faulting application fuel.exe, version 1.0.0.1, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.6055, fault address 0x00011689.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at Go.microsoft.com.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 66 75 65 ure fue
0018: 6c 2e 65 78 65 20 31 2e l.exe 1.
0020: 30 2e 30 2e 31 20 69 6e 0.0.1 in
0028: 20 6e 74 64 6c 6c 2e 64 ntdll.d
0030: 6c 6c 20 35 2e 31 2e 32 ll 5.1.2
0038: 36 30 30 2e 36 30 35 35 600.6055
0040: 20 61 74 20 6f 66 66 73 at offs
0048: 65 74 20 30 30 30 31 31 et 00011
0050: 36 38 39 0d 0a 689..

If there's any other information or testing I can do to help pin this down just let me know. Thanks again for your help.

Edited by: vinraith

Hi, I have the exact same problem. I installed V15.4 + patch 3 and the game works only the first time I run it. After that, it always crashes during the loading screen. I found out that if I delete the FUEL_RE_SAVE.sav file then the game starts correctly again, but whenever it tries to load a savegame it crashes. I also tried using my old savegame instead of the new one created by the mod, but it still doesn't work. Changing the mod configuration and activating only the basic Refueled mod doesn't help either.

I'm running the Steam version of Fuel on Windows 7 64, if you need more info just ask!

edit: ok, I read about this problem with patch 3 in the other section of the forum... went back to patch 2 and now the game works correctly. Sorry for the bump, and thanks for your great job with Refueled! looking forward to 15.5!

Edited by: SearMe