Help Me Get Thief 3 Working, Or How I Learned to Love Wasting $5

SyphonBlue

So, I downloaded Thief 3 - Deadly Shadows yesterday off of Direct2Drives insanely awesome sale they've got going on. Downloaded and installed fine, but when I go to run it, all I get is the circle "Wait" icon on the mouse, and then nothing. I've searched Google and all the "fixes" I've found have failed to fix anything.

My specs:

Windows 7 64-bit RTM
Intel Core2Duo T8300 2.40 GHz
Geforce 8600 GT, newest drivers available
4GB RAM
160GB Hard Drive

Anyone know what to do, or am I out $5?

Barcardi

This sort of thing is exactly why i keep around an old laptop with XP on it... only for old PC games. The laptop is probably only worth like 400$ now but im glad to have it.

sorry cant help... but i hope baldurs gate 1/2 runs on 7

Fig-D

All I've gotten for years in the spinning CD icon. Mine is a SecuROM issue, don't know if you have the same / similar issue.

Stormwatcher

did you try the compatibility modes in Windows?

SyphonBlue

Stormwatcher wrote: »

did you try the compatibility modes in Windows?

Yup. And Running As Administrator

Stormwatcher

hum
erm
might be securom

SyphonBlue

Stormwatcher wrote: »

hum
erm
might be securom

Nope, using a no-cd didn't work either. And I'm pretty sure Thief 3 doesn't use SecuROM anymore, as the no-cd crack was released by Eidos themselves.

SyphonBlue

Okay, actually the no-cd did do something. I can get T3.exe to stay open now, but now I get an error.

"Failed to start E:\games\Thief - Deadly Shadows\system\T3_Main.EXE! (timed out waiting for game to startup)"

Sparvy

Could be dualcore issue, try setting the affinity to a single core.

SyphonBlue

Already did that for both t3.exe and t3main.exe

Stormwatcher

maybe the game is just lazy then.

Dranyth

I'm at work so I can't give you the exact address, but have you tried the tech support forums over at Through the Looking Glass yet?

http://www.ttlg.com and in Enter Forums (I think) they should have a couple for Support and Legacy Gaming Support... not sure which they might have T3 under at this point, but I daresay they had to have seen virtually every possible issue that could've come up for a Thief game at this point and should potentially have a solution for it.

Houndx

Reinstall as administrator, possibly in compatibility mode. That helps on occasion.

edit: To be clear, I know you're already trying to run it as administrator and in compatibility mode but running the installer itself that way has a slim chance of resolving issues.

Goomba

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Okay, actually the no-cd did do something. I can get T3.exe to stay open now, but now I get an error.

"Failed to start E:\games\Thief - Deadly Shadows\system\T3_Main.EXE! (timed out waiting for game to startup)"

I'm told that if you ignore that it works well enough.

SyphonBlue

Goomba wrote: »

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Okay, actually the no-cd did do something. I can get T3.exe to stay open now, but now I get an error.

"Failed to start E:\games\Thief - Deadly Shadows\system\T3_Main.EXE! (timed out waiting for game to startup)"

I'm told that if you ignore that it works well enough.

Ummmm....what?

Goomba

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Goomba wrote: »

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Okay, actually the no-cd did do something. I can get T3.exe to stay open now, but now I get an error.

"Failed to start E:\games\Thief - Deadly Shadows\system\T3_Main.EXE! (timed out waiting for game to startup)"

I'm told that if you ignore that it works well enough.

Ummmm....what?

A guide said that if you don't hit the okay button it worked. Not that I would know, it doesn't even launch for me even doing what all of the guide-thing say.

SyphonBlue

Found a log file hidden in my Documents folder

2       main: Starting with cmdline ''
         3       InitInstance: windowed mode
         3       InitInstance: Creating window ( 0,0 - 0 wide 0 tall )
         6       Waiting for game to send process handle ... (ffffffff)
    120193       Game failed to send process handle.
    121193       Starting game shell ... E:\games\Thief - Deadly Shadows\System\T3.EXE

this is pissing me offfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Fig-D

Well, for years I've had problems playing Deadly Shadows through GameTap so I decided to pick it up for $5 through D2D to see if I could get this version working. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for you, I had no problem what-so-ever.

Did it launch the GameSpy window the first time you tried to run the game?

SyphonBlue

Fig-D wrote: »

Well, for years I've had problems playing Deadly Shadows through GameTap so I decided to pick it up for $5 through D2D to see if I could get this version working. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for you, I had no problem what-so-ever.

Did it launch the GameSpy window the first time you tried to run the game?

No, it didn't do anything except nothing.

Fig-D

Hm. Buying Thief off of D2D the first thing that you have to do (after installing it) is register it. This is done when the game detects that you have not done so and creates a GameSpy window before T3.exe is launched.

You should have multiple .exes in your Thief directory, have you tried running from T3Main.exe?

SyphonBlue

Tried them all.

slash000

Barcardi wrote: »

This sort of thing is exactly why i keep around an old laptop with XP on it... only for old PC games. The laptop is probably only worth like 400$ now but im glad to have it.

Er, why don't you just keep an XP partition on your hard drive so that you can boot into XP whenever you have compat problems? That way you can keep an up to date PC with up to date windows (or whichever OS you use), but also have XP running on your latest hardware, and not have to keep another computer around.

Barcardi

slash000 wrote: »

Barcardi wrote: »

This sort of thing is exactly why i keep around an old laptop with XP on it... only for old PC games. The laptop is probably only worth like 400$ now but im glad to have it.

Er, why don't you just keep an XP partition on your hard drive so that you can boot into XP whenever you have compat problems? That way you can keep an up to date PC with up to date windows (or whichever OS you use), but also have XP running on your latest hardware, and not have to keep another computer around.

Good point, but the laptop that i have on xp i had for other reasons, and honestly ive just been too lazy to partition it plus its just at the cusp of working with vista, so i never really bothered

SyphonBlue

slash000 wrote: »

Barcardi wrote: »

This sort of thing is exactly why i keep around an old laptop with XP on it... only for old PC games. The laptop is probably only worth like 400$ now but im glad to have it.

Er, why don't you just keep an XP partition on your hard drive so that you can boot into XP whenever you have compat problems? That way you can keep an up to date PC with up to date windows (or whichever OS you use), but also have XP running on your latest hardware, and not have to keep another computer around.

Yeah, I've got an empty partition on my hard drive right now. I just may do this.

slash000

SyphonBlue wrote: »

slash000 wrote: »

Barcardi wrote: »

This sort of thing is exactly why i keep around an old laptop with XP on it... only for old PC games. The laptop is probably only worth like 400$ now but im glad to have it.

Er, why don't you just keep an XP partition on your hard drive so that you can boot into XP whenever you have compat problems? That way you can keep an up to date PC with up to date windows (or whichever OS you use), but also have XP running on your latest hardware, and not have to keep another computer around.

Yeah, I've got an empty partition on my hard drive right now. I just may do this.

It may end up being the easiest solution...

... assuming that running the game in XP solves the problem.