Desperate!

[MannyTrillo]

I’m afraid my OOTP days are over… I’d be grateful for *any* suggestions of things to try. Here’s the whole sordid tale:

I’m running a historical league, starting in 1903. I got through 1920 without any problems, but when I clicked on start new season after 1920, I got an illegal operation error message at the “Processing Free Agents” stage. When I went back into the league, it was ready to start 1921 having skipped all of the off-season stuff, with all the free agents in the free agent pool, and also having extended all current contracts by one year. I back up my league after season, so I loaded up the backup and tried to proceed to the next season, and the same thing happened. I then tried my backup from after the 1919 season, and the same thing happened again.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far: rebooting, uninstalling and reinstalling the game (several times), resetting injuries and fatigue, setting all teams to CPU and running the auto manager, making sure all teams have depth charts, lineups, and pitching staffs filled properly, saving after doing all of this and before proceeding to the next season, making sure all the right folders are in the .lg files, manually releasing all the free agents before going on to the next season, and running around my living room screaming. None of this has worked.

I have 750 megs free on my hard drive, 32 megs of RAM. I didn’t do anything unusual, like expansion or anything like that, during 1920. I haven’t made any changes to my computer lately, and haven’t had other problems, other than that it tends to crash when I delete large files.

To make matters worse, after my latest uninstall-reinstall (and deleting a bunch of useless looking non-OOTP programs to try to free up space, which might have been a mistake), I now get a C++ runtime error when I try to load any league other than the default, so I can’t even get into my league.

So if anyone has *any* ideas whatsoever, no matter how far-fetched, I’d love to hear ‘em. Thanks!

[Henry]

[quote]Originally posted by MannyTrillo:
<strong>...and haven’t had other problems, other than that it tends to crash when I delete large files.

To make matters worse, after my latest uninstall-reinstall (and deleting a bunch of useless looking non-OOTP programs to try to free up space, which might have been a mistake), I now get a C++ runtime error when I try to load any league other than the default, so I can’t even get into my league.

So if anyone has *any* ideas whatsoever, no matter how far-fetched, I’d love to hear ‘em. Thanks!</strong><hr></blockquote>


Crashing when trying to delete large files is not a good thing - and is a sign you "may" have a hard disk problem. Also, randomly deleting "unknown files" as you have guessed, could also be the problem.

If I were you, I would backup all your past OOTP seasons, directories, whatever you have - as well as anything else you want to keep. Make sure you have disks, CDs, etc for all your software, and then (don't cry) reformat your hard drive and reload all from scratch.

I know this sounds extreme, but the fact you reloaded your 1919 season and it failed (after it worked once before) points to either (1) the game files are corrupted (which they can't be if you reloaded it) or (2) a bad spot on your hard disk. There's an outside chance Windows is screwed up too, but a reload will also fix that.

The problem here is you can spend forever trying to find the problem - and not, but reloading the machine is a full days work and almost guaranteed to work.

Henry

[Killebrew]

This does sound a bit like a system related problem, but you should run scandisk and defrag before reformatting. Reformatting can be a very major undertaking unless you're a PC tech whiz and it requires you to do a lot of tricky backups if you want to retain your email archives, etc..

Make sure all background progs are off when running these progs. Pressing CNT+ALT+DEL should show only Explorer and Systray before starting scandisk, same drill before starting disk defrag. After doing that reboot the PC and try OOTP3 again.

Also - 750MB is not a lot of empty HD space, if you can afford a little more your PC will run more smoothly. Not sure if you can afford to clear more space though. Let us know what happens, reformatting is a big job, but it is sometimes the only option.

[ December 21, 2001: Message edited by: Killebrew ]</p>

[MannyTrillo]

Thanks for the tips, guys. Well, I tried defragmenting my disk drive and also running Norton disk doctor. There were a couple of errors, but fixing them didn't change ootp. What did work for the C++ runtime error was closing all of the programs other than systray and explorer that come up when I turn the computer on. But still I get the illegal operation message when I proceed to the next season.

I'll look into reformatting my hard drive- I'll have to find someone to help me do it. Does reformatting mean I will lose all programs and files unless I save them onto disks?

[Killebrew]

[quote]Originally posted by MannyTrillo:
<strong> Does reformatting mean I will lose all programs and files unless I save them onto disks?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes - reformatting means wiping your hard drive clean, so all programs and even the operating system need to be reinstalled. Some common things people forget to save are any of your documents you have written, email address book, email message archives (if you care about them), the website "Favorites" directory (if you care about them), and saved games. If things go smoothly this can take a few hours to do (plus time to reinstall whatever programs you need), but it's fairly common that some minor issues arise, that's where the tech geek buddy really comes in handy. Good luck!

[sporr]

One positive thing of a complete reformatting is that your computer will probably be much faster since you'll clear out all of the extra stuff that has been cluttering your PC over time, though 32 MB of RAM isn't that much. You should upgrade that while they're givin' it away.