Frustrated doesn't BEGIN to cover it

Sorry I havent responded in a while, yes I have to re-delete it every time. Its a small inconvenience but its nothing that I cant handle. Yes I just re-delete it and make sure its in the recycle bin instead of my EQ2 directory before I start the game and it starts up perfectly fine for me.

Small price to pay to have it work, aye! If I still had WinXP on this box, if it hadn't died from something else, I might try that--nah, my issue was always memory leakage, or whatever else the Powers called it in a recent fix. :-/

Uwk
who didn't think either "memory" or "leakage" were 4-letter words (and thus banned), but I guess so... /shrug

I have a suspicion I know what the problem is.

My best guess is the file you're having to delete is some kind of generated cache file for the game assets (since it seems to generate AFTER game launch). As such, I wouldn't be surprised if Windows XP just can't deal with loading a file that size along with the game. Don't forget, most WinXP users are running a 32-bit O/S that has a 4GB max RAM limit (and that includes your video card RAM too!). Most WinXP users also tend to only have about 2GB in their machine as it's older hardware.

Now, there's a good chance I might be entirely off-base, but that makes the most logical sense to me.

Also, I noticed someone earlier claim that WinXP won't run on modern hardware and someone else debunk that.

Well, I just upgraded my PC a few months ago. I can 100% guarantee that Windows XP will not even install on my new rig. Why? Because there's no WinXP SATA drivers for it, therefore it can't see my drives, therefore it won't install. I even had to supply drivers to Win7 to get it to install, and I haven't had to do that for years!

...that was an interesting experience to say the least...

The $64,000 (or, perhaps, 40 911,56 GBP) question is: that cache file, is it even remotely necessary to run the game? If it isn't, can we have a toggle for it, a "kill this stupid thing and don't have it load, ever, while I'm running XP," SOMETHING that will eliminate it unless/until we want it to show up? :-/

Uwk

Well since people can delete it with no issues, I would say it is NOT needed.

Basically if there was an option to turn it off, you'd just have longer load times, but I'm pretty sure most people here would just be happy to PLAY the game.

Amen!

Uwk

Interesting. I wonder if that will fix the appalling, unplayable performance I'm getting much of the time on Windows 10 after the last series of 'fixes'

Irk...yet another reason not to immediately jump on 10, imho. :-/

Uwk

Hey all, if deleting the file before running the game is the only thing that has to be done, then surely a batch file can be used to save some time in the long run?! I'm no expert in batch scripting, but the following should do the job...

Code:

@ECHO OFF
DEL "%~dp0ASSETSLIB.VPL"
START "" "%~dp0EQ2.exe"
EXIT

Copy this into notepad and save this with a ".bat" extension... and place inside the same directory as the Everquest executables and the ASSETSLIB.VPL file. Running the new script should then delete the file and start EQ2 (which you can create a shortcut on the desktop for!). If somebody wants to try this please let me know if it works!

Heh! Does sound like it might work; crossing fingers that it does!

Uwk
who wonders: why can't the Powers just incorporate this...? :-/

Deleting the file + launching the game in a batch file does work. I wrote one for a friend today via remote connection as he's on XP and hasn't been able to log in since the last patch. I had it run the launcher instead of the EQ2 exe, though, as it seems to be faster for him.. don't ask me why.

Code:

del "C:\Program Files\Sony Online Entertainment\Installed Games\EverQuest II\assetslib.vpl" /F /Q
start /d "C:\Program Files\Sony Online Entertainment\Installed Games\EverQuest II" Launchpad.exe

/F does a "force" (in case it's read only)
/Q makes it quiet (no yes/no prompt)
Of course, use the path to your EQ2 on both lines And substitute the eq2.exe for Launchpad.exe if desired.
Save to whatever.bat on your desktop and double click it whenever you want to launch the game.

Woo-hoo! Awesome!

Uwk

From Tuesdays official patch notes!

GENERAL
(Full Install only) For those having trouble validating an existing assetslib.vpl file on startup, you can now add ‘cl_force_paklib_create 1’ to your eq2.ini file to force re-creation of this file.

So there's now an "official" workaround as well.

Also, for anyone having Windows 10 issues, download the DirectX web-installer and run it. I had to do that on a couple of machines (this laptop and my main gaming rig) to get a few games to work: This War of Mine, EverQuest 2, ARK: Survival Evolved.

Aye, now if we just had an official workaround to get rid of that one file that's messing up everyone trying to login with WinXP... :-/

Uwk

Have been running win 7 for years on this machine and everything was perfect until one patch and then frequent crashes and games closes and the like and SOE blamed a 2ms lag on 1 hop in a ping from me to them and said take it up with my ISP, the ISP said it was Nothing and unreasonable that a 2ms ping lag in a internet node in the world would cause this and kicked me back to SOE and since then they've closed the petition and ignored me. and i feel like quitting the game and same with all my mate who played with me. go find something else to do as the games obviously not supported by the makers.

Crashing and the game closing, if it's caused by network latency, is a sign of horribly unstable code. I suspect that support just had no idea what you were describing and latched on to the first thing they found that they could point to. Crashes are more likely being caused by a change in how something is being done, or a driver update (usually video), or bad files. There has been an ongoing thread for a few months now about client crashes, with one of the devs watching it for information. I suspect the support tech that handled your petition just wanted to get it out of the queue.
First I'd try validating all files (this is done from the launcher). I'd also think of when the patch hit that started this, and see if you also had a Windows update around that time, or if you updated any drivers for video or sound.

Thus compounding any damage...oy. :-/

I had issues with my uber-duber-super-wooper gaming laptop years ago, and had I known then what I know now, I'd probably be able to solve the issues myself, but back then, surely even the techs could have suggested a few simple adjustments in the Options (Alt+o). As it was, I'd probably made a mistake in admitting that it was a laptop I was having troubles with. Ooh! What I'd said...

"We can't POSSIBLY tweak the game to fit EVERY possible permutation of LAPTOP out there. YOU obviously bought the WRONG ONE for this splendid game!"

"What permutations? It's a Windows box, not an Apple or a Mac. My buddies in the know say that VAIO is even worse for playing this than most laptops. And besides, WoW plays just great on mine; don't have any technical issues whatsoever there."

>crickets chirp; no further replies<

Uwk

Thanks for that link, but I'm still holding fire on using that system (because it should be part of daybreak, not something separate).

Back on topic: good to hear that there's apparently a fix now for those being affected by it; not so good that it still seems to remain unacknowledged by The Makers (at least on this thread).

Why is it our job to go to a separate website to report bugs? Are they not getting the ingame /bug reports?

It is getting frustrating that even the ingame /petition is not working either.

The advantage to the Issue Tracker is that we can actually see what is happening with it after an issue is reported. Also, they prioritize items based on how many people VOTE for a given issue. So if it's important to you, get it on the Tracker (link in my sig block) and get others to upvote the issue.