Empire total war 0xc000007b Debugged

Greetings


I am having a really weird problem with this game.
It started as an application error 0xc000007b.

I thought it was c++ 2005 runtimes but I removed them, reinstalled them, no go. Its not Directx9 either, I have it. Its not Net framework either, i have all versions checked.

I am running a windows 7 ultimate sp1 64bit.

After alot of messing about this is the debug of the dump>

>FOLLOWUP_IP:
wow64!whNtRaiseHardError+119
00000000`75616b4d 90 nop

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 1

SYMBOL_NAME: wow64!whNtRaiseHardError+119

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: wow64

IMAGE_NAME: wow64.dll

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4ce7ca9d

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: STATUS_BREAKPOINT_80000003_wow64.dll!whNtRaiseHardError

BUCKET_ID: X64_APPLICATION_FAULT_STATUS_BREAKPOINT_wow64!whNtRaiseHardError+119

now all the other applications (32bit) work fine. Even 32bit games work fine. like street fighter 4 or Witcher2. Its a specific problem to Empire total war.

Does anyone know what this could be about? wow64.dll as far as i know is a dll that emulates a 32bit environment in a 64bit system, and for some weird reason it wont work for empire total war....

 

I have tried to get more information and this is basically it imo. The exe file is pointing to 64bit dlls in system32 folder.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/16/dependency.jpg

Is this a framework issue then? reinstall everything again? for the 20th time...

any suggestions anyone?

 

hey David,

Thank you for the reply, I have built the rig myself from the parts I bought separately so no brand...Pentium Dual Core CPU E2200 @ 2.20GHz, 4 gigs ram, gigabyte motherboard, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS....

Graphics drivers I update every month or so, I think nvidias newest drivers came out yesterday...
Chipset drivers I will check but I seriously doubt thats the issue. I beleive I loaded latest intel chipset drivers that were there when I installed win, february this year.

Yes and heres the laugh, Newest total war game "Shogun 2" works flawlessly.
I also downloaded napoleon total war demo which doesnt work. The only 2 games i get 0xc000007b are Napoleon total war and Empire total war. And thats because ,according to the dependency walker, empire.exe and napoleon.exe load 64 bit dlls from system32 folder...

Also compability modes have no effect neither does run as admin, Im also on admin account and the exe file has full permissions for all users....

log file attached below...

 

It might be time to install Windows again - without crapware like frontline registry cleaner installed.

 

hehe, yes i installed it as a possible remedy but it really is crapware. Gave it a go and uninstalled it. Funny how it still reports it....Tune up utilities is pretty good imo so I kept it.

*edit, i see in the log what ure pointing at, its a scheduled scan of frontline, I removed the program and all reg keys so no worries that frontline is the source of problem.

 

RESOLVED

Solution: physically delete all d3dx9_ dll files from system32 and syswow64 windows folders. Easiest to do using windows search.

After that simply install dx9.0c.

yay it works...

apparently its really easy for dx9 to get bugged in a single dll file, and if u choose to reinstall it without deleting all dll files it wont get fixed...

 

Nice fix

Yes, DX can be a real pig when it goes wrong, seen many cases of it bugging out after registry 'cleaners' have been used too.