Sudden crash of Army Builder

[ganondorky]

So I've had Army Builder for some time now. I used it without any problems for a bit. The program started to crash on my PC. I haven't found a good reason for this to happen but its getting kind of frustrating. As a work around, I've obtained a secondary license and am running it off my laptop. I've now become interested in trying to diagnose my ill fated programs issue with my computer.

I've run a program called process monitor by sysinternals. The program, in a nutshell will show you everything the computer is doing. And when I say everything I mean it. I caught 625,000 events in 4 minutes. I of course filtered out all of the background noise and now have several logs of the events that happen immediate to the crash of Army Builder on my computer.

These are, about the events that I see happening:

10:17:11 - Sophos (Anti virus) running queries and creating mappings in the registry and within its program files
10:18:43 - ArmyBuilder.exe opens registry key HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\GRE_Initialize
10:18:44 - SearchIndexer.exe creating mappings in C:\Windows\System32\
10:18:44 - SearchProtocolHost.exe creating several mappings to parts in system32 and quirying the registry. Most of this looks like dead ends.
10:18:44 - SearchFilterHost.exe doing its own Quiry and file mappings in system32
10:18:44 - SearchProtocolHost.exe doing more queries and mappings

This goes on for a hundred or so more entries till I get to this:

10:18:44 - Createfile to C:\Users\Tyler\Documents\Army Builder\userimages

It then starts running SearchProtocolHost scanning this folder and all of its parent folders then opens some registry entries. This process rinses and repeats 3 more times till the program closes.

These exe's are related to Windows Indexing. I've never had a problem with it before and I don't understand why it would now. Not really one to question why things break for no reason, I disabled indexing service. I run the program and it crashes again with the same looking log.

I've attached a CSV of the log if anyone else maybe has a keener eye for discerning what my computer is doing prior to the crash. I would love any help with figuring this out!

[Colen]

These days computers are doing a lot of stuff in the background, even while you're using them. It's very unlikely that the windows search index stuff is having any effect on Army Builder; the cause is probably something more sinister.

When it crashes, Army Builder should generate a crash report and ask that you submit it to us by email. Have you sent the reports on to support@wolflair.com? If not, please do that, so I can troubleshoot them and hopefully find a solution.

Hope this helps!

[ganondorky]

Hmmm. I do not get any crash reports. The program freezes for just a second then closes out. If is generating one, then it isn't asking me to send it. Is there any way I can check that it is?

[Colen]

If there's a crash report, AB should show it to you before it crashes, so the fact that one doesn't appear indicates that something is going badly wrong - even if AB doesn't show you a crash report, you should get a message from Windows indicating that the program crashed. Does one of those appear?

Does the crash occur after you do anything specific? For example, does it happen after you press a specific button, or add a specific unit? Does it happen if you just start Army Builder and leave it running?

Do you have any anti-virus software running? If you disable it and run AB, do you still get the crash?

[ganondorky]

The crash only appears so far as I'm building an army in 8th ed warhammer fantasy. I've not tried anything else since I don't have anything else. I've tried multiple armies to the same effect and it isn't consistent with what unit I'm adding or what I'm changing. So far the longest I've tested just letting army builder run is about 30 minutes -- which is way longer then when I'm actively using it.

The crash as far as I can tell generates nothing. I don't see an AB crash report or a windows prompt that the program terminated. I don't see any logs of the crash in the event viewer under applications, system or security. I have Sophos for anti virus. It still crashes even with Sophos disabled.

[ganondorky]

Any movement on this? Any idea's? Would definitely like to get this running again. Is there a way to make a clean install? I've already tried to uninstall and re-install once and it is still crashing as it did before.

[ganondorky]

Almost 10 days with no response. I sincerely hope that someone is still watching this. Please don't ignore this issue. At night I'm a table top enthusiast and by day I'm an IT analyst -- I'm no stranger to poking around and modifying the registry, playing with settings, services, and doing what it takes to discover the root of an issue. Tell me what to do, what to look for and its done! All feedback can get back to you all and it should only enhance your knowledge-base, right?

/BAAAAAWWWW

[Colen]

Hi there,

Sorry for losing track of this. Here are two things to try:

1) Load the "Example Game System" and add some units, just like you do for Warhammer Fantasy. If you use it in the same manner as Warhammer, do you still get the crash?

2) Go to Tools -> Explore Folders -> Program Data Folder, and an Explorer window should open. Quit Army Builder, then delete the "abkey.lic" file in the folder. This will temporarily unlicenses your copy of Army Builder - don't worry, you can relicense it later. Now restart AB and reload Warhammer, and do the same sort of things you usually do. Do you still get a crash?

(Once you've finished testing this, you can relicense Army Builder from the License menu.)

Also, which version of Army Builder are you using, and what version of Windows are you running?

Thanks.

[ganondorky]

1) Yes. I wasn't sure what I was doing but I was adding, subtracting units, decking them out. I eventually crashed Probably in the same time frame that my Fantasy lists were crashing.

2) Yes. Still crashes while not licensed.

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit with SP1. Arny Builder is at version 3.4b - #343.

[Colen]

If you activate your Army Builder license, create a new roster (for any game system), then save a file, does the save succeed? Can you open the file afterwards?

If Army Builder is disappearing, without any message appearing (either from AB or from Windows itself), that indicates that there's a serious problem somewhere. If this was a normal crash, either Army Builder, or Windows itself, should report that the crash occurred.

I can think of two things that could cause such a problem:

1) Another program is killing the Army Builder process. This could be a misguided antivirus tool or similar.

Are you running anything other than Sophos? Any internet security tool, or something like that? Does the problem persist if you disable it?

2) Something is broken in your windows installation that, for some reason, only affects Army Builder in this odd way. Try the instructions here to check your system files:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/win...ir-errors/3358

Does it detect any errors?