Help!! My game is crashing

[Kintaro316]

Ive been playing ZT1 for a while now, and every now and then, for what seems to be absolutely no reason at all, while playing on freeform games, the game will spontaneously close, and give me an error message reading "Microsoft Zoo Tycoon has encountered an error, and has to shut down". Does anyone else ever get this?? Is it fixable?? Its quite possibly the most annoying thing, cause it happens just at random. The most recent one, I only had 3 exhibits finished, and POOF, the game shuts down.

Does anyone have any suggestions?? ((Other than throwing my computer out the window)) :crash:

EDIT - I have edited the title of your topic to better explain your problem - Yellowrose

[Yellowrose]

This can happen for a number of reasons.

Possibly an error on install if the game has been recently installed.

A file could possibly be corrupted. This can happen on a fresh install.

If you are using user created downloads, there is the possiblity you have too many in your game or you may have files that conflict with one another causing the game to crash.

If you can give me some more information I can possibly help you out a little more.

[animalkeeper]

Try reinstalling the game. It works for me.

[Kintaro316]

First, thanks yellow rose  :eggthumup

Secondly, I've tried reinstalling a whole bunch of times, but I will try once more. Thanks for all who replied.

[Kintaro316]

As to your question Yellow Rose, what happens is that once I get about 30+ exhibits going, at any point in time, no matter what I'm doing at the time, I get that "Microsoft has encountered an error and has to close" message. No warning of any kind or anything. My computers less than a year old, so I would think that it should be able to handle the game easy enough. I keep terrain blending off, but that doesnt seem to make any difference.

[Yellowrose]

The biggest cause of game crashing is user downloads.

Do you have any installed and if so how many?

[animalkeeper]

YR right. One time I had like 100 dl and when I clicked on path tab it crashed.

[Kintaro316]

As for user downloads, I think I have the downloadable animals, and the igloo shelter, thats it.

[Yellowrose]

There could be a conflict with the game and the downloads that only occurs after a time limit.

At the moment the utilities have not yet been uploaded to the downloads so the ZT Registry cleaner is not available. I'll try to get this up as soon as I can locate which of the staff have the file.

Once we have it available I'd like you to download it.

Then the following steps will have to be taken to see if it fixes your problem.

1. - Download the registry cleaner and install it to your system.

2. - Back up your zoo.ini file and any saved games and screenshots you want to keep. Copy and paste the folder containing all your downloads to another part of your system maybe the desktop or my documents as you will need them later.

3. - Once you have everything saved then go ahead and uninstall the game.

4. - Run the ZT Registry cleaner. This will remove any entries to the windows registry.

5. Reboot your system.

6. Reinstall the game and run it for a bit to be sure it is operating properly.

7. add in only the igloo shelter and then let the game run for a bit to see if it causes any problems on it's own.

8. if not then you can begin to add the animals you had installed 1 at a time running the game for a while after each addition to see if any problems arise.

Doing this is a tedious thing I know but is one of the only ways at the moment to tell if there is a conflict happening between files. Once the problem occurs then make a note of the file you last added and what other files are also installed. post the list and I can then do the same thing to see If I can locate the exact files causing the conflict and get the files repaired so they no longer cause conflicts.

[Kintaro316]

Thanks Yellow Rose, I appreciate the help.