I've been sick as a dog for the past week, so I haven't been monitoring the forums. When crashes occur, send them to
support@wolflair.com. I've been dealing with those emails, even though I've been sick.
The problem is almost guaranteed to be either due to use of AOL or Norton Security. Both of those products regularly seem to introduce incompatibilities with Windows, but it could be a different tool that is acting up. More than likely, you installed an update to your security software (or it was done automatically for you) and that's when the problem started.
The majority of times I've seen this problem are when the internet security software is not behaving *exactly* like Windows. Most internet security software intercepts all the built-in Windows mechanisms for internet access and hooks in all their own security logic. However, they sometimes don't behave exactly like Windows does. Since AB relies on the built-in mechanisms and the standard Windows behaviors, inconsistencies can cause AB to crash when it starts up. AOL and Norton are notorious for this problem.
If this is the problem, the issue is likely tied to AB's attempts to automatically retrieve info about available updates when you launch. They are being mucked with by whatever security software you have installed on your computer. You can try to turn off AB's automatic checking for updates and hopefully get things running again. Please use the following steps to try disabling updates when AB launches.
1. Go to the Start menu, then to Programs, then to the Army Builder folder.
2. Right-click on the shortcut icon that launches AB.
3. Select "Create Shortcut". This creates a second shortcut that will launch AB.
4. Right-click on the newly created shortcut and select Properties.
5. In the field labeled "Target", you should see the full path to the AB executable. Go to this field and append the following at the end of it: " -disableupdates". Case *IS* important and there MUST be a space between the launch executable name and the new text you add.
6. Click on the OK button to save your change.
7. Use the new shortcut to launch AB.
Another possibility is that your operating system settings are configured to not like running AB. This is not likely the issue because AB was working fine up until recently. However, if it is the problem, you'll need to launch AB in "compatibility mode". To do this, right-click on the shortcut that launches AB and select Properties. Click on the Compatibility tab at the top and configure the shortcut to run AB in compatibility mode for Windows 2000. Save the change and then try launching AB.
Hopefully, one of these modifications will fix the problem.