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    From SWTOR Forums.

    [Last updated: 7:45pm Pacific time, January 18th.]

    This particular thread is meant to just address specific issues with common fixes, to help folks get up and running to the point that they can get to the character select screen. Unfortunately, not every solution in the world is going to be in this thread, but it will try to touch on the most common ones that we know affect lots of people!

    Remember that any time you need to request detailed help, the Customer Service FAQ will help you provide the information Bioware folks need. In addition, some general Launcher troubleshooting tips are in a sticky, and the Bioware folks are keeping a Hot Issues thread that will probably be updated as issues arise.

    If those don't work for you, then...

    1 - INSTALLER (SWTOR_setup.exe, or the installer on the CDs)

    1.1 - THE INSTALLER DOESN'T WORK!

    If you run SWTOR_setup.exe and it runs through its progress very fast and then you don't seem to have the game installed anywhere, there are two common issues here:

    • You are running a program which conflicts with the installer. Known culprits are FRAPS, Ventrilo, RadeonPro, WindowBlinds, DLLFixer, Ivilinx Download Manager and Dell's "PremiereColor" color management tool. Some people -- though not all -- have also had trouble with overclocking utilities as well, such as MSI's Afterburner or eVGA's overclocking tool. (There are probably a few others, too, so if you aren't running any of those and the installer still won't work, go quit whatever you can from your systray as well.)
    • Your antivirus or firewall is blocking SWTOR_setup.exe from running. Make sure you have added exemptions.

    If that doesn't work, you might want to try creating a second administrator user on your machine, and try running the installer there -- just in case some account-specific setting is causing troubles.

    If even that doesn't help, you can check your installer log. You can find a textfile under your Documents directory, called "Install STAR WARS The Old Republic" which contains a log of everything the installer did. You can look there to get an idea what might be going wrong.

    If you see an error in that log about 'Canceled during language selection' or something similar, this can be caused by having one of the conflicting programs above running. Try quitting everything you can and running the installer again. If even that doesn't work the launcher will usually work if you copy it from a machine that did install correctly, but you may need to do a few updates by hand, such as the VS2008 redistributable package linked lower in the thread.

    2 - LAUNCHER/PATCHER (Launcher.exe)

    2.1 THE LAUNCHER WON'T RUN

    Not A Valid Executable / LIBCEF / ICUDT

    If you get an error involving Launcher.exe not being a valid executable, or anything involving libcef or icudt, something's become corrupted in your launcher install. There are two ways to fix this.

    • The first, simpler way is just to run the FixLauncher.exe program you'll find in your SWTOR directory. That will try to clear up a lot of launcher issues for you in an automated way.
    • If FixLauncher doesn't work, download the SWTOR_setup.exe installer again and re-run it atop your existing installation. That won't touch the actual game files that you've downloaded, but will replace the launcher with the latest version and hopefully get things fixed

    Only One Instance

    If Launcher.exe hangs on you and you try to run it again, you will get an error from Windows about how only one instance of the launcher can be running at a time. Sometimes, killing launcher.exe in your Task Manager and then restarting it again is enough to get you running. If not, however, there are some possible fixes below.

    Launcher Doesn't Appear / Just Won't Start

    When the launcher first starts, the UI won't appear until its finished a few things. As a result, if the launcher freezes up on you at start, you won't see anything appear at all. You will still see launcher.exe in your Task Manager process list, however.

    Some folks have said that allowing the launcher to sit for 10-15 minutes actually allows it to finish whatever its trying to do and recover this situation (the long wait) apparently arises most often with college campus proxies that are automatically assigned in Internet Explorer via a PAC file, where not all proxies play nicely with the launcher.

    If, however, even waiting around doesn't work for you, there's a couple of things you can try beyond just the usual 'run FixLauncher, or try re-downloading and re-running SWTOR_setup atop your existing install' solution.

    Firstly, check if there is a "patch" directory under your SWTOR install. If there is, the launcher may have died partway through checking on patches delete that directory and things should work. You can also run SWTOR_setup.exe again to be sure that you have a complete/good copy of the launcher. As noted above, that won't overwrite any game data you've downloaded, just will repair the launcher. If this happened, you may have a partial patch from an earlier beta build of the game. Bioware CS notes that uninstalling and reinstalling in such a case may be the best way to ensure you run clean.

    Second, if you are running a game that uses GameGuard anticheat protection, GameGuard seems to conflict with the SWTOR launcher. In most cases, if you ensure the game's launcher/update tool has been exited, GameGuard will go dormant and you'll be able to play. This means quitting out of launchers for Lineage 2, Aion, etc.

    Third, if your antivirus is Avira, some folks have reported that Avira just blocks the launcher from running no matter whether or not you put that in the exceptions list. You might want to try replacing Avira with Microsoft Security Essentials (as MSE is free) and uninstalling Avira just temporarily, to see if that fixes the problem for you.

    Fourth, apparently launcher settings have become corrupted for a few folks you can blow away the launcher.settings file in your SWTOR directory and try running again to see if that helps.

    Fifth, a couple of folks have been having trouble with the most recent build of the Curse client blocking launcher.exe from starting. Try quitting the Curse client entirely (using Task Manager if you have to) and then run launcher.exe again.

    If none of that works, hit up Windows Update and make sure you have the latest .NET updates installed. In addition, make certain that you have the latest build of Java installed.

    You can also set the launcher to always run as Administrator go to the SWTOR icon, right-click, pick properties, and check the 'Run as Administrator' option.

    If none of that works, you may want to try rebooting in Safe Mode + Networking, and see if the launcher will start up for you. If it will, then something running in normal mode is likely the cause. If you boot in Diagnostic Mode (which loads all drivers, where Safe Mode doesn't) and the launcher fails to work, then it's likely a conflict with drivers of some sort.

    Known potential driver conflicts include:

    • Korg MIDI device drivers (thank you to shurikt for sharing this one)
    • Avid Mbox3 (thank you to Empire_Player for spotting this one)

    If you have a Korg keyboard, synth or MIDI adapter plugged into your computer, you might want to try temporarily disabling that and see if the launcher works. Similarly, if you have an Avid Mbox3 connected, try unplugging that and seeing if the launcher starts. (Really, if you have random USB audio devices you don't need plugged in, try unplugging them all just in case one of them is a conflict.)

    Lastly, for at least one person where FixLauncher did not resolve the situation, deleting the assets_swtor_main.version and assets_swtor_<language>.version files allowed the launcher to start working again. (As this will almost certainly necessitate a repair, this should probably be considered an absolute last resort!)

    2.2 - LAUNCHER WON'T UPDATE

    If the launcher runs but gets stuck in a 'Please wait, updating launcher' situation every time you run it, sometimes just waiting for 10-15 minutes will correct this. In many situations, this is due to a proxy server being set in Internet Explorer that really slows this down for some reason.

    It's been reported by a poster in this thread and a couple in other threads that sometimes, if you go to the Launcher language settings and change it from English to French (or really, from any language to any language) and back, that may get the launcher to recover and finish updating. That's a bit of an odd fix, but can't hurt to try.

    If the launcher really never recovers, however, you can try FixLauncher.exe to see if that corrects things. If FixLauncher doesn't help, you can also install on another machine and run the launcher to let the update happen, then quit without logging in and copy the directory back to your other machine. That will bring the launcher current, which means this updating step will be skipped.

    2.3 - LAUNCHER WON'T AUTHENTICATE

    Congratulations! Now you have a launcher with a nice Star Wars logo and an imposing city skyline. Ideally, things go smoothly from here, and you can enter your username and password to connect. Unfortunately, life isn't always ideal, so here's a couple more potential issues and fixes.

    The login service is unavailable. / Server Not Responding

    While the Launcher runs on your own machine, the Launchpad is Bioware's server that actually handles authentication and validation of your account. If the launcher isn't able to contact the launchpad when it starts up, this will be the message you'll get. (If you beat the launchpad to the punch and try to log in before that error pops up, you'll get 'Server Not Responding' instead.)

    The first and simplest thing to check is whether your time and date are way off. If they are, the authentication will probably fail; set Windows so that it updates time and date from Internet time servers, and you'll be in sync. It's also worth checking your BIOS clock; some folks have reported that being off has also caused them problems, even when Windows seemed to have the right time.

    The corollary to this is to make sure that your computer timezone and your timezone setting here on the account page of your SWTOR.com settings are the same. Based on a couple posts by CS droids in other threads, if the timezones don't match, you might get an authentication failure and the 'Server Not Responding' error when you try to log in.

    If time and date are correct, you might have a network issue. If you open your command prompt (Start menu, run, cmd.exe) and type 'ping launchpad.swtor.com' you should see responses. If you don't, either the login servers are genuinely down (which is a possibility) or your network is blocking you from seeing them entirely. This could be a firewall issue, so double-check your firewall settings. If your firewall is all fine, keep in mind that this could be ISP maintenance -- Sky, for instance, had a day or so where they couldn't see the launchpad servers. If you have friends on the same ISP who play, see if they can get on. If not, chances are your ISP might be having routing issues.

    If you can ping the launchpad but cannot connect, this could still be due to a firewall issue. Make sure that you've allowed launcher.exe through your firewall software and that it's not being blocked by any antivirus or other security software. Make certain you're not running Peerblocker, which for whatever reason specifically seems to dislike the launcher even if you add it to the exemption list. Make certain you're not running IPblocker, or else have added launcher.exe to the exemption list. If you're running Kaspersky Internet Security, make sure to disable 'Scan secure connections,' as that seems to block the launcher from authenticating.

    Now, there is one case where you will only ever get Server Not Responding: if your SWTOR account name includes an ampersand (and possibly other unusual characters), the login service will no longer let you log in to the Launchpad after one of the recent rounds of maintenance, because the ampersand will choke the newer version of the login server. The solution here is to go to My Account, and change the email address you use. Pick another one that doesn't contain an ampersand or other odd characters, change the address, make sure it's validated and then you should be able to log into the game using the new address.

    For some people, none of the above solutions are working. As per this BioWare post (at the top of the page), they're trying really hard to find a way to shore up the launcher in such cases and provide better feedback. As such, before you try any additional fixes, please heed the droid quoted below and send in information for while your system is broken:

    Quote: Originally Posted by D5-T1 arrow_right.png

     

    If anyone is still encountering this issue, please assist us by sending in the following information retrieved with MsInfo32 before trying any other fixes:

    • Press [Windows Key] + [R]
    • Enter "Msinfo32" into the following window and press [ENTER]
    • Now that you have the System Information open, click on "File" -> "Export" and save the file as msinfo32.txt
      Note: Please don’t use the "save" option, as this will not create a .txt file.
    • Please send us this file as an email attachment to support@bioware.com, include the error message “Login Service Is Currently Unavailable” in the mail.
    • Once you have done so, please let us know by posting in this thread.

    Thank you very much for your assistance.

     

    Once you've tossed the info off to the droids, there are a few things you can still check to see if you can get yourself up and running. The most likely situation seems to be missing some files that Windows installations normally include, which can apparently get lost. These are files that normally belong in the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc directory if you are missing any of them, you can retrieve them from the zip file at here and then try running the launcher again. In particular, the relevant bit is usually just the 'https' lines from the 'services' file.

    One more thing that's worked for some people on Windows 7 or Vista -- as a complete last resort -- is to reset the Winsock state and TCP/IP stack. Open the Start menu, type 'cmd' into the search field, and then right-click on the result to 'Run as Administrator' for the command prompt. Once you have a command prompt window, you can type the following two lines, then reboot your computer and try again:

    netsh winsock reset catalog
    netsh int ip reset reset.log hit

    Additional Verification Needed

    This error crops up if you haven't set security questions on your account. Go check the security question page and set at least three of the five questions. Once this is done, the launcher should allow you to log in with your user and password, to begin patching.

    Certificate Failure

    If you get a certificate failure error, the simplest thing to check first is whether your clock is off. If your clock is way off, the launcher fails to negotiate properly with the patch servers. (This happens when security certificate fails to validate, because your clock is set to some time before the certificate existed. If your computer thinks it's 2007, a certificate from 2011 is clearly not valid yet.)

    You may also have outdated security certificates which you've skipped over updates for. You can go find the optional 'updated certificates' update in Windows Update (probably the simplest route), or re-download the Verisign and Thawte Root Certificates from the Verisign site manually, using this helpful guide by the Drunken Pirate Guild. Updating those certificates from either source can't hurt anyway; Bioware's going to be far from the only place that'll eventually sign with the newer ones.

    I Keep Getting a Busted Security Question

    Make certain your security question doesn't contain any accented characters. Even if the website allows this (which I don't believe it does, anymore), the launcher doesn't always like it.

    None of this Worked, now I'm Sad...

    Well, no little FAQ is going to solve every single problem. Luckily, the launcher keeps a log of everything it tries to do; you'll find a 'logs' directory under where you installed SWTOR, and the error messages you get there (if any) might help track down what's going wrong.

    2.4 - LAUNCHER WON'T PATCH

    You logged in, and now the launcher is trying to pull down great heaping piles of Old Republic data to get the game installed. If this is the point where you're having trouble, there's a couple fixes for problems here, as well.

    Patch Data Unavailable

    Patch Data Unavailable type messages can happen when the patcher slows down to a certain point and it will erroneously report 'Patch Data Not Found.' It's recommended to just let it wait for 5 minutes or so to see if it recovers, rather than stopping and restarting the patcher.

    If this keeps happening repeatedly -- or if the launcher keeps actually freezing up, to the point that Windows says its stopped responding -- then promoting the launcher to run as Administrator may solve this one.

    If you previously had the corrupted CDN server issue and edited your hosts file by hand, this can also be caused by that. Everyone who edited their file by hand is trying to hit one specific patch server, and that poor server is getting a wee bit overloaded. Since they've said they went through and scoured the corrupted copies away, you probably want to revert your hosts file, then flush your DNS cache using 'ipconfig /flushdns' from the command prompt. That should get you routed properly to a less-heavily-loaded server and the download should work more smoothly.

    Stuck on some asset at some percentage / Patcher restarts the same file

    The patcher patches in stages, and the most prominent progress bar is for the current set of assets. When that set is done, the bar resets and it moves on to the next asset. This has apparently led some folks to the misapprehension that the patcher has started over entirely chances are it hasn't, but rather just moved on to the next set.

    If you can confirm it genuinely is looping over and over to re-download the same files, or has frozen in place on a specific percentage point, it's worth reinstalling the as listed above even if you aren't getting the 'Certificate Authentication failed' error some folks are reporting one of the Akamai content distribution servers has a certificate signed by a newer root certificate and thus the patching fails and starts over on the file again if you have outdated root certificates.

    Beyond that, if you have more than one machine in the house on which you're planning to play SWTOR, and one works where the other doesn't, you can just copy the SWTOR directory from the working machine to the broken one. Or if you have a friend nearby who got themselves all installed and patched without issue, you can turn to them and snag their SWTOR directory. (Make sure to run SWTOR_setup.exe on the destination machine before you do, though, just so that all your various registry settings and such are in place.)

    Now, if you are having serious patching errors, there are two types of errors that will show up in the launcher logs if you examine them:

    Reliable source serving corrupt data

    This means that one of BioWare's Content Delivery Network (CDN) servers is serving you corrupted data. They've gone through and scrubbed corrupted servers from the system, and changed the launcher's behavior; what the launcher []i]should[/i] do at this point is keep reconnecting to different CDN servers until it gets a valid copy of the file. If you find yourself getting this error repeatedly, BioWare has asked that you do a 'ping cdn-patch.swtor.com' and post the resulting IP address in this thread; if any of the CDN servers are still serving corrupted data they definitely want to know immediately. (See the post by Joveth from BioWare about halfway down the page linked to in the previous thread.)

    If you did edit your hosts file as was recommended in several threads, the BioWare folks have asked that you revert that change, because that causes all users to hit one specific CDN server, which causes that server to deliver data veeeeery sloooooowly and can cause other problems. In fact, if you're now having problems with more recent patches, the hosts file change is a good possibility as to the cause; when all the folks who edited their file try to patch and all hit one single CDN server to download everything, that server will be heavily overloaded and serve files slowly (or stop serving them at all).

    'Corrupt Source detected' error, 'Unknown file' error or 'File info: missing...' error in launcher log

    These errors mean that the file checked out on the CDN side, but was corrupted on your local side somehow. There's unfortunately no one fix for this. Many folks with these errors have been able to fix the situation by running the Repair option in the launcher, but if the problem persists, there are a few other possible fixes with no clear front-runner.

    Important note: Though the 'repair' option will appear to redownload the game, it is not necessarily actually doing so. It's examining the assets, comparing, and figuring out what it needs to redownload. See this post from BioWare for further details.

    There's been some discussion that, although BioWare scrubbed the CDN servers clean of corrupted files, there may still be some corrupted files floating around out there. However, the above error -- 'Reliable source serving corrupt data' -- is the error that usually shows up for that.

    Now, some people have seen the corruption due to other (hardware) issues: because the files are so large, the launcher seems more vulnerable to memory issues than some things are (simply by virtue of touching so much of your RAM at once as the files are uncompressed, patched or copied around). Running memtest86 can help to expose if there are issues in your memory, but there can also be misconfiguration. For instance, BioWare's also noted that they've been internally able to reproduce patching errors on a system where the CAS Latency in the machine's BIOS was set wrong for the memory installed, causing memory errors which corrupt things in much the same way. So you can check your memory speed in your BIOS.

    If your memory is good and your configuration is good, there's also a corner case in some 64-bit editions of Java which can affect the patcher portion of the launcher; if you're on the current version of Java and on a 64-bit machine, there seems to be a bug in the 64-bit JRE that can cause large buffers to get corrupted in certain edge cases; this causes the patch process not to work right. The simplest fix is thus to uninstall the 64-bit version of Java and reinstall the 32-bit version of Java 1.6.

    If even that still doesn't work, BioWare folks are trying to track down other causes, and are asking that people send them information, as per this sticky thread. So, if you find these error in your launcher logs and your memory tests out good and the configuration is right and the Java suggestion doesn't work, please contact them with the information they request in that thread. The more information they can gather, the more easily they'll be able to make fixes that will help get everyone up and running more smoothly in the future!

    In the meantime, the best workaround for this issue is to get a copy of the SWTOR directory from a friend (or a second machine) whose copy you know is not corrupted and which has patched successfully. That's not an ideal solution, but it'll get you up and running in the meantime.

    3 - STARTING THE GAME (SWTOR.exe)

    3.1 - NO PLAY BUTTON

    Your launcher is working, everything's downloaded, and now... the play button is grey! And there's an error message!

    The error message flashed past too fast to read!

    If the error message flickers past way too fast, chances are it says "The current environment is unavailable for play" or something similar.

    Okay, then, the error is "The current environment is unavailable for play."

    That means 'none of the servers you have access to are available right now.' This usually means, you want to check the server status page or forums for stickies or posts about server downtime or maintenance.

    I get an error about "there is currently no active subscription on this account" instead.

    At this point, now that Early Access is over, even with the 30 days of free game time that is included, you'll need a game timecard or a credit card subscription set on your account to be able to play. Make sure your account is fully set up, and the error should go away. If not, you'll need to contact Bioware CS.

    3.2 - ERROR CODES

    You're ready! You're in early access! You click PLAY and...

    ERROR CODE 1

    If you're getting a black screen followed by an 'Error Code 1' dialog box, some users are reporting that downloading the Origin client and running it once adds some missing settings or setup to your machine and can resolve the error. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any other real fixes found/reported yet.

    ERROR CODE 3

    This seems to have something to do with administrator accounts in general. If you aren't on an administrator account, you'll need to run the game on one. If you are on an administrator account, try making a new one and running the game there to see if that works. The usual caveat applies: don't use any strange characters in the account name, just stuck to A-Z and 0-9.

    ERROR CODE 5

    This error code usually means one of the asset files has become corrupted on disk somehow. Running 'repair' in the launcher may work to get you back up and running, by re-downloading the broken asset. Alternatively, if you have someone else in the same household (or a friend locally) who has a good, working copy of SWTOR on their own machine, you can just copy their directory over to your machine and that should fix the problem.

    ERROR CODE 6

    The most common cause of this error is when you don't have at least 3 gigabytes of disk space free. If you installed TOR on a drive other than your main Windows system drive, make sure there's 3gb free on both some data is likely to be stored in temporary directories or otherwise in your user profile data, which will most likely be on your system drive.

    The Bioware folks have suggested also making use of Microsoft's Disk Cleanup tool to try and free up space. If you have 3GB free on all applicable drives, bad sectors could be confusing the situation. Run scandisk, and check again.

    This error can also happen if you have non-standard characters in your Windows username -- Chinese or Japanese, Cyrillic or Greek letters, or even just accented characters can cause the game to erroneously return error code 6, thinking there's not enough space in the AppData directory. If you have accented characters or other non-ASCII characters in your Windows username, try making a temporary second Windows account and running the launcher.

    ERROR CODE 7

    One of the common issues here is if your graphics drivers aren't up-to-date. If your graphics driver doesn't support the Direct3D Shader Model 3, this error will happen. So, double-check that your graphics drivers are current first, because that's the easiest fix. Unfortunately, if you don't have a dedicated GPU (i.e., if you don't have an Nvidia or ATI graphics card) you probably won't be able to play.

    If you are on an ATI-based Mac using Bootcamp, the drivers included with Bootcamp do not always work and may trigger the issue. You can hit up AMD's GPU driver download page and pick specifically the Mac/Bootcamp option and the appropriate version of Windows; the drivers AMD will give you from that page are known to work properly with SWTOR.

    If your card is definitely good and your drivers are current, this can also be caused if your .NET Framework is out-of-date or if you have an older version of DirectX installed, so hit up Windows Update just in case. And one last possibility is that your copy of PlatformInfo.dll is missing from the installation (or corrupted). If that's the case, you can try reinstalling, or you might be able to get a copy from a friend's installation of the game.

    Another issue is apparently if you use ASUS GamerOSD to allow overclocking of your GPU, something in that program conflicts with the system check and can cause the Error Code 7 issue to surface. In general, if you are running anything you don't absolutely require for the computer to function, you should probably try quitting it to see if it was causing a conflict with the game. You can even try a Clean Boot just to be safe.

    Unfortunately, those don't seem to be the solution for everyone. The CS droids are aware of that, and are trying to collect information for the developers in this thread, where they'll also presumably provide updates on any fix. If everything is current, you'll want to check over there.

    SERVER ERROR 1002

    Error 1002 actually means that you've become stuck in a queue. According to Bioware, you'll want to make sure there are no SWTOR processes running in the task manager, and then just wait 30 minutes. That will give the servers enough time to see that you're a ghost, kick you from the queue, and allow you to log back in.

    SERVER ERROR 1003

    Normally, this means the server has gone down -- or been taken down for maintenance. It can also be related to firewall issues, so the usual 'check your firewall' instructions apply.

    For some people, this happens without any firewall issue and while the server is demonstrably up. For many people, setting the launcher to run in Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode seems to solve the problem as an interim workaround. Otherwise, there is currently a sticky BioWare information thread where they are trying to gather more information on this particular error.

    SERVER ERROR 1005

    First, do make sure that SWTOR is being allowed through the Windows firewall, as per the instructions here on Microsoft's site. If you use a different firewall program, make certain that SWTOR is allowed to function as a server as well as a client (i.e., to accept incoming connections as well as make outgoing ones).

    Secondly, make certain you're not running Peerblock or similar programs for some reason, Peerblock conflicts with TOR at the actual game level and will prevent the server list from running. Make sure to add SWTOR.exe and Launcher.exe to the Peerblock exemptions, or else temporarily turn Peerblock off while playing. Other programs that can cause this issue are Hotspot Shield and IPblock.

    Bioware CS has noted that the following ports need to be open for SWTOR, as well:

    • 80
    • 2052 - 2053
    • 8995
    • 12000 - 12999
    • 20000-30000

    For the vast majority of modern routers, SWTOR will be able to negotiate opening these ports for you. Unfortunately, if your router is not allowing SWTOR to properly request these ports to be opened for you, you may need to go to your router and forward them to your machine directly. The process necessary to open the ports on your router will be specific to your router you'll probably want to Google the make and model number, along with 'port forwarding' or 'open ports.'

    If you are on a college network, you may have to contact campus IT to ask them about getting access through a proxy server of some form.

    (Again, if you are on a college network, you may have to contact campus IT.)

    3.3 - GAME DOESN'T START / BLANK SCREEN

    Game Crashes Immediately with a Message about MSVCP90.DLL

    The MSCVP90.DLL is part of the Visual Studio 2008 runtime set. Normally this is installed by a number of programs, but especially if you skip installation sequences it's possible to end up missing this file, or with an outdated copy. The quickest fix for this is to go grab the latest copy from Microsoft in a handy VS2008 runtime redistributable package. Once you're up-to-date, things should go better.

    Game Crashes Immediately with NodeSpecCache error

    For some people, running the FixLauncher.exe program in your SWTOR installation directory will solve this. For others, they may have to use the Repair function in the launcher.

    If neither of those helps, one of the more common causes of this issue seems to be having a language other than English (United States) set as the fallback language in your Windows preferences. If you're running Windows 7, this can be set from the 'Region and Language' control panel go to the Administrative tab and make sure the 'Current language for non-Unicode programs' is set as 'English (United States)' -- if that's not the setting, change it and try running again.

    Another cause is if your Windows user account name contains extended characters (accented characters, Greek characters, Cyrillic characters and so on). You can try creating a second administrator account using only basic numbers/letters and see if that works.

    If neither of those applies, there's a chance the game's caches are corrupted. As per this thread, you can go to your SWTOR settings directory (either under \Users\<youraccount>\AppData\Local\SWTOR or \Documents and Settings\<youraccount>\Local Settings\Application Data\SWTOR) and try to remove the DiskCacheStatic and DiskCacheStream files from the 'swtor' subdirectory. If you can't remove them, you can try the trick in that thread and move the 'swtor' subdirectory out of the way, making a new one and copying the other files over.

    In addition, some folks have reported that ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 10.x does not coexist well with the launcher, where 9.x worked fine. There doesn't seem to be a current workaround for this other than disabling ZoneAlarm or downgrading back to v9. If you're a ZAES user getting the NodeSpecCache error, double-check what version you are running.

    Game Crashes Immediately with 0xc0150002 error

    This seems to mean a missing support library, so it's worth running through Windows Update before doing anything else. Just in case there are support updates you need.

    If that's not enough, generally, installing either Microsoft .NET Framework 3 manually or anything that installs .NET Framework as a prerequisite (Quicktime, for instance) will fix this. As some folks have had trouble getting .NET 3 to install, reinstalling Quicktime from Apple's website is probably the quickest/simplest way.

    Game Crashes Immediately with some other Message (or no message at all)

    For other crashes, another potential fix for folks is removing Nvidia Forceware Network Access, which seems to conflict with SWTOR in some situations and cause a crash.

    Yet one more potential fix is apparently a corrupted launcher.settings -- if you clear that file away from your SWTOR directory and try running again, that fixes the issue for some people.

    In addition, if you are running with two monitors, apparently the addition of antialiasing in patch 1.1 can cause issues, as the value defaults to on. If you disconnect or power off the secondary monitor, the game may start correctly for you. If you then disable anti-aliasing, you should be able to run in windowed mode again with both monitors on.

    Further, if you've tweaked your client settings file, try going to the AppData directory (C:\Users\<youraccount>\AppData\Local\SWTOR on Windows 7 or Vista, C:\Documents and Settings\<youraccount>\Local Settings\Application Data\SWTOR on Windows XP) and finding the client .ini files and moving them to the desktop (or otherwise out of the way) to let SWTOR start with default settings. If you've overridden game settings using Nvidia Control Panel or ATI's Catalyst command center, revert them to default as well.

    One more thing that can cause problems for people is having the magnification settings of their computer set to something non-standard. On Windows 7, there are two options -- an actual 'Magnification' setting in the Display control panel, and a text size option. On Windows Vista and XP, there is only a text size option (on XP this is buried in the Advanced settings of the Display control panel). If you've changed the magnification or system text size, try reverting to default and see if that lets the game run properly.

    Game Doesn't Start / Stuck at Loading

    If you click Play and the game seems to hang for several minutes, this is not unexpected. Don't panic over this either just wait a few minutes, and you should see the opening movie.

    If it still never starts after that, some players have reported that having a second monitor active causes the game not to load if you're set in fullscreen mode. Try temporarily disabling your second monitor, and the game might start up.

    If you get a screen that only has the SWTOR logo and the blue 'loading cog,' then you may have a firewall or security dialog that popped up behind the game, asking whether or not to allow it access to things. If that isn't the case, you might be in a server queue there appears to be an issue where the queue position popup doesn't come up in all situations. Just hold tight, and you might pop in when your queue number comes up.

    My Screen Goes Black!

    If you only get a black screen indefinitely, check to see if you are running an ATI/AMD Radeon card. If you are, there is a known incompatibility with the Catalyst 11.8 (and occasionally 11.9) drivers they will not work and will result in a black screen. Either update to newer drivers, or roll back to old ones, and you should be fine. 11.10 and 11.11 are known to work fine, as is the 11.12 that AMD/ATI released on December 13th.

    There are also rumors that the current beta build of the Nvidia unified drivers has a similar problem for some people if you're a GeForce user with the black screen problem and grabbed the most recent beta, you may want to try downgrading to the last real release.

    If your monitor is saying something like 'invalid resolution' or 'bad signal' or whatever, chances are that the SWTOR default resolution wasn't working with your monitor. You'll probably want to go find the 'client_settings.ini' file in your SWTOR directory and change a few modes.

    You can find the client_defaults.ini file in the installation directory of the game. By default it is located at:

    • For 32 bit Operating Systems - C:\\Program Files\\Electronic Arts\\BioWare\\Star Wars - The Old Republic\\swtor\\retailclient
    • For 64 bit Operating Systems - C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Electronic Arts\\BioWare\\Star Wars - The Old Republic\\swtor\\retailclient

    Open the file in a text editor you'll find many graphics settings there.

    The most common settings to change for people are:

    • fullscreen (often changing from 'true' to 'false')
    • D3Dfullscreen (often changing from 'true' to 'false')
    • windowed mode

    You'll also find width/height/refresh and other options, if you know what you're doing. Once you've edited the file, save it and exit the editor, then try running the game again.

    If that doesn't help, there's also a Bioware thread on video and sound issues you might want to check, and one on specifically the black screen issue, with details on some troubleshooting steps you can take.

    My Screen Goes Black And (For Added Fun) I Crash, Too!

    Apparently, this is often a partially corrupted DirectX installation. Unfortunately, the smaller web-installer version of DirectX cannot repair a broken installation, where the bigger actual DirectX distribution can. If you think this might be your problem, you'll want to download the full DirectX redistributable package and run a repair from that, then try again.

    As mentioned earlier, as well, if you have two monitors, apparently the rendering changes in patch 1.1 also can cause issues; if you disconnect the secondary monitor, the game may start correctly for you.

    If that doesn't help, there is a thread on this, where folks are trying to track down possible causes.

    My Screen is All Stretched and Everyone Looks like 'Fat Hobbits.'

    There are two main causes for this.

    First, if you're on a Mac running Windows under Bootcamp, the version of the ATI drivers included with the Bootcamp disc doesn't like SWTOR. Don't bother trying to update the ATI drivers via Apple Software Update or Windows Update, just grab Catalyst 11.11a from ATI's site directly and install. (I link to 11.11 because a number of Bootcamp users have said 11.11 gave them better frame rates than 11.12 did.)

    Secondly, apparently some people have had Windows Update install an erroneous monitor driver. Since SWTOR reads monitor settings differently than some games, this has caused it to think it needs to run the 3D portion in 4:3 mode. If you've had an odd monitor driver appear that doesn't match your real monitor, try uninstalling it and either reinstalling your real monitor's driver, or reverting to the generic Plug-and-Play driver monitor.

    If neither of those works for you, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to override this at present.

    3.4 - GAME ISSUES AFTER PLAYING A BIT

    I Get Disconnected with "Error 9000"

    Error 9000 means your internet connection went away... or at least, the game thinks it did. If you're playing on a link that has a tendency to drop, this error is probably real. However, apparently some folks have seen Ventrilo cause this issue while playing on an otherwise-solid Internet link. If you're getting this problem and are running Ventrilo, try quitting and seeing if that helps. (No, that's not an ideal solution, I admit.)

    Another interesting factor is that some setups -- it's unclear where in the chain of things, whether at your router, your modem or your ISP or what -- don't see SWTOR connections as actual network traffic, and so will reset your connection periodically. Setting something that will be recognized as a live connection -- streaming video in the background (BBC iPlayer works for those who have access), or BitTorrenting a Linux ISO or something similar (please only choose LEGAL torrents, folks) -- can prevent this sort of reset/disconnect, and thus keep you connected. If you BitTorrent something, set the bandwidth to be pretty low; you'll stay connected, and it won't eat all your link. This trick does not work for everyone, but has worked for a surprising number of players who were suffering the Error 9000 disconnection issue.

    Blue Screen of Death

    If you're getting a blue screen of death after you've been playing for a bit, the most likely cause is an overheating video card. Opening up the computer and cleaning out the fans is one of the best fixes you can try if that doesn't help, try turning down the graphics detail for a while and see if that helps.

    3.5 - EMPTY SERVER LIST

    The same steps as server error 1005 apply here make sure SWTOR.exe is given an exemption in your firewall, that you're not running Peerblocker type software, and that the ports are open if necessary.

    If even that doesn't work, some folks apparently have a build of the game that's still looking for the beta server list, and which hasn't patched to current. If this is the problem you're having, some folks report that running the 'Repair' option in the launcher fixed things for them by forcing the appropriate stuff to update. If even that doesn't help, apparently a complete uninstall and reinstall does work (though, obviously, redownloading the entire game is not particularly fun).

    At least one player has also remarked that if you previously set SWTOR to run in Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode to deal with issues under a previous patch, turning that back off can make the server list appear for some folks.

    4 - THAT WAS A LOT OF READING, NONE OF WHICH FIXED MY PROBLEM! I HAZ A SAD.

    There are a few other general tricks you can try. Some of these are detailed in specific sections above, but I'm going to include them here in a short general list.

    • Try running FixLauncher or re-installing the launcher from a copy of SWTOR_setup downloaded from swtor.com again. You would be startled at how many problems this fixes.
    • Make certain you are running the launcher as administrator. (Right click the launcher icon, pick properties, and check the 'run as administrator' box.)
    • Make certain your computer's time and date are set correctly, both in Windows and for the BIOS. If they aren't, the encryption necessary for various steps might fail.
    • Try changing your region/locale/language to English (United States), if you have it set to something else.
    • Try creating a second administrator account on your machine, and running the installer, launcher or game (whichever is malfunctioning) from there.
    • Make certain your installed copy of .NET Frameworks is completely up-to-date, and that you have everything from Windows Update that looks important.
    • Make certain your installed copy of Java is up-to-date; if you're on a 64-bit system, try downgrading to the 32-bit version of Java instead of the 64-bit one.
    • Try doing a Safe Boot with Networking (or a complete Clean Boot) of your computer, to see whether something that's loading at startup is causing conflicts.
    • If your problem is somewhere after patching has completed, try running the 'Repair' function from in the launcher.
    • Double-check all antivirus and firewall settings. Even if you had an exemption before, sometimes certain firewalls 'forget' that exemption when the launcher updates itself. You may need to remove and re-add the exceptions for launcher.exe and SWTOR.exe -- and yes, you do need both of them in the exceptions, not just one or the other.

    If none of those helped, keep in mind that while I do try to update this post periodically, this is just an effort by a fellow player. Always, always check this board to see if there's anything in the stickies listed at the top -- especially the Hot Issues thread -- or do a search to see if there's a thread about your specific error. If you do end up creating a new thread, again, make sure to listen to the Customer Service Forum FAQ before doing so, in order to provide the maximum amount of info for the CS droids to work with.

    Here's hoping everything works for you now!

    Edited by Ztuke
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    Addendum #1:

     

    Problem

    While attempting to log into the game, I press "Play" the computer either freezes immediately, or loads the SWTOR splash screen and then freezes forcing me to do a hard reboot.

     

    Possible solution:

    Click on the windows START button.

    Type "msconfig" into the "Search programs and files" bar.

    Click on the "Boot" tab of the msconfig window.

    Click on the "Advanced options" button.

    Make sure all 4 of the top items are unchecked, specifically examine and make sure that the "Debug" box is unselected/clear.

    Press OK, press apply, close the application.

    Try re-launching the game.

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    • 7 months later...

    BUMP!

     

    I ran into the 'Launcher is updating. Please wait..' problem this evening.  I ran FixLauncher.exe and switched the launcher language from English to French to English in order to get the launcher to finish updating.

     

    Thanks Ztuke!

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