Topic: Spore won't start up (SOLUTION)

[smjjames]

It's probably better to keep it at the same resolution of your screen. I find that any other resolution setting causes the CC screen to distort.

1920 by 1080 is pretty damn big, what are you using for a monitor???

[KorDe]

Haha, it's actually a laptop believe it or not For some reason quite light, though.

Anyway, does anyone else have any suggestion or should I try to contact customer service somehow?

[SMitty111]

I've read some threads and it seems people can't log in. My problem is worse than that, though.. the game won't start, at all! I've installed it, and I don't know if it's Vista or the game is bugged, but when I try to play it, nothing happens. Screen doesn't even go blank or anything, no indication of having clicked the shortcut at all, except the computer starts making a lot of noise.

Anyone know what could be causing this? I mean, even if the servers are down I should still be able to play offline or at least get to the login screen, right?

Thanks in advance.

Do you have the CC, they said it had a vital part that you needed to play (thats what i heard go get the trial)

[SporeForSure]

Could be a program conflict. Did you remember to uninstall the creature creator before installing spore?

It is impossible to install spore without uninstalling the CC first, the Spore installer even fires up the CC uninstaller program when installing Spore.

[KorDe]

Do you have the CC, they said it had a vital part that you needed to play (thats what i heard go get the trial)

Yes, but the Spore installation requires for the CC to be uninstalled first, so I doubt that's the case.

[Necrox]

-What laptop brand and model is it (the whole model number, not just the series. Often found on a sticker underneath the PC if you don't know)

-What graphics card do you have?

-Have you tried killing all but essential processes? Soem laptop manufacturers bog down the PC's with so much crud it's unbelievable.
If you don't know how:
Reboot and allow it to start fully but don't do anything except the following.
Right-click the Task Bar and select Task Manager (TM). In TM go to the Processes tab and right-click and choose "End Process" on every single one (except explorer.exe svchost). Some of them it wont allow you to end, those are essential so that's fine.
Then try running spore and give it a good few minutes to try and start - don't keep double clicking the icon just because it doesn't start straight away.

If this works then it's likely your PC has either a program running which conflicts with spore, or your resources are taken up by too many running processes. Which one it is can be tested by rebooting and trying again, one process at a time, launching spore between each. It's a slow but easy way to diagnose it. Though not the most accurate it's an ok way to do it if you're not a PC wiz.

PS: when you write -safe in the shortcut it should be outside the quotations.

[Spore-addict]

Well my dvd drive would not read the disc.

After several tries with just moving the disc around then reinserting it...the drive finally accepted it and ran the game.

[Necrox]

Ooooh the irony! I have the same issue now
Spore started fine the first time, no problems launching it. I had the login issues everyone else is having, and then decided to just play offline. I proceeded to the settings as I always do first when I get a game, and set everything to max (like I did in the CC, my PC can handle it) and resolution to my monitors native: 1680x1050. Then I exited spore to allow the effect to take place.
I relaunched spore... nothing happened. The process is running in the background, but nothing came up. I waited a few minutes (first launch only took 20 sec or so).
I killed the process and relaunched spore; again nothing happened. I tried with spore in safe mode; nothing happened.
I rebooted and tried again (both with and without safe mode); nothing happened.
So I basically got it to launch once fine but now it wont.

I still have a few things to try so I'll keep you posted, feel free to add comments though.

UPDATE 1
I just found this in the readme file: "It is not recommended that you run at fullscreen resolution if your monitor resolution has a height or width of 1600 or larger.", what the heck??
Could that be it?

UPDATE 2
I tried using the switches -r:1024x768 and -w (first just resolution, then both) but it still doesn't launch, so it doesn SEEM like it's just the resolution that buggers it up.

UPDATE 3 (final)
Ok I found the problem.
I went to the game folder then Sporebin and right-clicked on SporeApp.exe. Went to Properties, then the tab Compatibility and ticked the checkbox "Run this program as Administrator". It worked fine after that
I'm a bit puzzled though. There were no error messages to indicate it didn't have the right privileges, no pop ups, no nothing. And the first launch worked fine without it.

In any case, there's a solution if others are having the problem. Could the OP try it and see if it works for him?
If it does, then please change the title of the thread to include "(solution inside)".




-----Desktop PC Specs-----
Windows Vista Home Premium x64
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz
4GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB (Driver Version: 7.15.0011.7519)
2x400GB SATAII HDD

[KorDe]

Oh, how I love you I thought I'd done that already, but apparently not. It now runs with the silky precision of a crab.

I've also heard of some other solutions for this, none of which worked for me, but some might be interested in. Some guy got theirs to work by creating a new user account each time he played (kind of sucks tbh). The others were pretty much mentioned on this thread already.

[Necrox]

Oh, how I love you I thought I'd done that already, but apparently not. It now runs with the silky precision of a crab.

I've also heard of some other solutions for this, none of which worked for me, but some might be interested in. Some guy got theirs to work by creating a new user account each time he played (kind of sucks tbh). The others were pretty much mentioned on this thread already.

You're welcome ^^ Glad I could help you (and me )

[ukirii]

this is great for people with vista...but if you have XP there is no "play this as" button....so now what do we do???

[Necrox]

I don't have XP so I can't explore the issue for you, but are the symptoms EXACTLY the same?
Because to be honest this seems like a problem specific to Vista due to the way it handles the administrative rights of programs. XP doesn't have the same authentication layer so while the issues may seem similar I doubt they have the same background.

The only thing I can think of if this IS the same problem in XP, is if your user account is not of the Administrator type. Make sure that the one you try it on is.

[Bearsman113]

Sorry to spoil all the success, but I have the same problem and more .  Mine also won't run, and when I went to check the "Run as an Admin" box it would not let me check it and is in grey print...come on what is up with that?

[Phanatic62]

I also have XP, am the administrator on my computer, have more than adequate hardware, up to date drivers, am begrudgingly running only one GPU (what's up with THAT?), and I've tried these things so far:

• Starting in Safe Mode
• Started the game and walked away and let it run for a while
• running without EADM, and while signed in and out of EADM
• Reinstalled the game 3 times, and restarted numerous times

And yet absolutely nothing happens when I start the game.  "SporeApp.exe" runs in the background, and if I try and run it again i get error "Another instance of this game is already running [1000]" which makes sense.

The *only* reaction I've gotten is when I right click on the Spore icon, go to "Run As..." and select "Current User" and leave the "Protect my computer and and data from unauthorized program activity" I get a pop-up from Spore saying "Could not write license data.  Contact customer support".  However, if you uncheck the program activity box, it runs the program and nothing happens as usual (except for the background task).

Has anyone with XP been able to work around this?  I haven't contacted EA support yet, but that'll be my next move and I'll report back if they can give me a functional workaround.

[Necrox]

Sorry to spoil all the success, but I have the same problem and more .  Mine also won't run, and when I went to check the "Run as an Admin" box it would not let me check it and is in grey print...come on what is up with that?

What if you make a shortcut to the exe file and and do it inside that shortcut instead?

I also have XP, am the administrator on my computer, have more than adequate hardware, up to date drivers, am begrudgingly running only one GPU (what's up with THAT?), and I've tried these things so far:

• Starting in Safe Mode
• Started the game and walked away and let it run for a while
• running without EADM, and while signed in and out of EADM
• Reinstalled the game 3 times, and restarted numerous times

And yet absolutely nothing happens when I start the game.  "SporeApp.exe" runs in the background, and if I try and run it again i get error "Another instance of this game is already running [1000]" which makes sense.

The *only* reaction I've gotten is when I right click on the Spore icon, go to "Run As..." and select "Current User" and leave the "Protect my computer and and data from unauthorized program activity" I get a pop-up from Spore saying "Could not write license data.  Contact customer support".  However, if you uncheck the program activity box, it runs the program and nothing happens as usual (except for the background task).

Has anyone with XP been able to work around this?  I haven't contacted EA support yet, but that'll be my next move and I'll report back if they can give me a functional workaround.

Barring an actual bug, the only thing I can think is the original suggestion that something might be blocking or interferring. Just for the sake of it have you tried stripping msconfig of all non-microsoft service and all startup programs, rebooting and trying?