Can't uninstall/reinstall!

[magicpiper]

So I've been having a couple problems with the game ever since I put it back on my hard drive a couple days ago. Basically, it'll load up fine, but when I click New Game, it'll run the little percent-ometer, but then upon reaching 100%, the game will just stop. I can move my mouse around but that's it - none of the buttons work, I can't exit, and when I try to close it from the Task Manager, it tells me that it's debugging or something.

Then I decide to reinstall, so I click reinstall, and the percentometer pops up again, but this time it's only there for a split second before it says that it was successfully done. 'That's odd' I think to myself, and try again, but it's the same problem. So now I try uninstalling it - same thing happens, percentometer pops up for a second, says it's successful. But I check my directory and it's NOT uninstalled at all!!! All the files are still there, it didn't do anything! The only thing I can think of is that I f'ed something up during my initial installation or during patching, but if I can't uninstall the game, what can I do?

Any help appreciated, thanks a lot!!!

edit: by the way, running Win2000

 

[Sim_One]

Try doing the following if you have not already done so:

1. Get the Civ3 v1.29f patch
2. Get Service Pack 3 for Win2k
3. Uninstall Civ3, delete the folder that contained Civ3, and reinstall Civ3.

 

[magicpiper]

Thanks a lot for the help!

But I went ahead and formatted my hard drive (yes, I'm that desperate to play Civ3, but it needed to be done anyway) and it works perfectly! So I guess I definitely must have f'ed up the installation or something. Even my year old save game works fine!

Thanks again...

 

[ainwood]

FYI, You will find that the uninstall information is actually the last thing written during installation. If it doesn't install properly, then it won't have written the necessary information to allow windows to uninstall it.....

 

[Pillager]

Originally posted by magicpiper
Thanks a lot for the help!

But I went ahead and formatted my hard drive (yes, I'm that desperate to play Civ3, but it needed to be done anyway) and it works perfectly! So I guess I definitely must have f'ed up the installation or something. Even my year old save game works fine!

Thanks again...

Blimey. Well that's one way of doing it!

 

[Birdjaguar]

I've had a similar issue. I'm running xp profressional. I uninstalled the game and it won't reinstall at all. I've been through regedit to remove all traces of civ 3 (with directions for looking from infrogrames) I've updated my install set up kernal (I think that what its called), and even re installed xp. When I load the cd it gives me play, and reinstall options. I choose reinstall and then it says I have to uninstall the game first, I click yes and it zips through that in 3 seconds (there are no civ 3 files or folders on the system at all). In the end nothings is insatalled except it puts the civ 3 exe file in my windows folder.

Any ideas?

 

[ainwood]

It sounds like the windows registry still thinks that the game exists.....

Have you tried uninstalling via the windows control panel?

You can download a small program called regclean from here that may help. It hasn't been tested on win XP, but it may work anyway I haven't tried it, so I hope it doesn't wreck anything (I believe it creates an "undo" file anyway). This should clean up the registry properly.

So:

1.) Try to uninstall from Windows control panel.
2.) Any files that are not deleted from the civ III folder, delete manually.
3.) Reboot.
4.) Run regclean.
5.) Reboot again.
6.) Try to reinstall civ.


Playing round with the registry can cause problems, but hopefully the above shouldn't do too much damage (this bits just my disclaimer in case it goes wrong....)


Good luck

 

[Birdjaguar]

Thanks, I have tried using windows control panel to unistall. I downloaded regclean and will give it a try this evening.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Hello ainwood, I finally ran regclean, rebooted and tried to reinstall no luck. some how the cd still thinks taht athe game is installed.

BTW, regclean goes back to 1998 and is no longer supported by Microsoft. But it ran ok under xp and I don't seem to have suffered any ill effects.

Any other suggestions?

 

[ainwood]

All I can suggest is that you look through the registry manually and deleted any keys for Civ III. I haven't got Civ on my work computer, so can't tell you what keys to delete at the moment. Have a look yourself, if you know what you are doing with the registry.... If not, I'll try and give you a step-by-step instruction on how to do it.

One other thought - have you installed any patches?

If so, try seeing if you can "uninstall" them. I believe that you can do this via the windows control panel.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I have been through the registry several times looking for civ, civilization, infogrames. I've searched for them and manually looked. I've removed everything I've found.

I had installed patch 1.17. Control panel does not show anything related to civ in its list.

An interesting thing happens when I try to install the game: It goes through an uninstall and copies the civ exe file into the windows directory and adds HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\1.00f to the registry. Then it stops.

I've even replace the install shield kernal twice to make sure it is the most current. Last week I reinstalled xp (as a repair and not a clean install) hoping to wipe the registry. No luck. Your thoughts on where to find registry keys woule be great.

 

[ainwood]

It is probably a value written under the windows uninstall information.

This is really strange though. Have you tried the Infrogames tech support? Or you could try and e-mail firaxis (if the infogames tech support costs $$)

 

[Birdjaguar]

I did contact Firaxis early on and they sent me to Infogrames who have offered some help. They provided some guidance to searching the registry and suggested a clean install of XP. I have been to the registry entries for uninstall and removed what seemed obviously civ related. Money isn't the issue. I even bought a new copy of the game at one point to check for cd problems.

Is there a way to force an install on to a different drive to bypass the uninstall issue? In DOS you could do such things with command line instructions. I wonder if there are files on the cd that would support such an install.

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by Birdjaguar
I did contact Firaxis early on and they sent me to Infogrames who have offered some help. They provided some guidance to searching the registry and suggested a clean install of XP. I have been to the registry entries for uninstall and removed what seemed obviously civ related. Money isn't the issue. I even bought a new copy of the game at one point to check for cd problems.

Is there a way to force an install on to a different drive to bypass the uninstall issue? In DOS you could do such things with command line instructions. I wonder if there are files on the cd that would support such an install.

If you have got a spare disk available, you could always just back-up your current HDD onto it, reformat your current one. Reinstall windows, then you should be able to reinstall civ.

The obvious problem with this is the amount of work involved, and the fact that you will lose all your cookies, dial-up info etc etc.

Re. installing on another drive - try it, but not convinced that it will work. Basically, I think the install program is checking to see whether civ is installed at all, anywhere on the PC. It won't really care where the program actually is.

You could try infrogames again, and ask them specifically which registry key is being checked in the install process.

Stupid question, but have you actually tried to manually delete all the Civ files from your PC?

I'm fast running out of ideas here.... but you could try a search for all .INF files - I think these are the ones that hold the setup and uninstall information. See if you have a Civ one. These are just text files, so a "search for text" inside the file will probably work.

I'll actually link to your question in the Computer & Tech support forum. Many frequenters there are quite switched-on, but don't necessarily come here .....

 

[Pillager]

If there's a restore point prior to your first installation, try rolling back to that.

Er, you could try copying the CD to the HD and installing from there. I don't know if that would work, but it must be worth trying.

If, for some bizarre reason, you have the exact date of the install, you could search for all files created on or around that date, and delete any Civ-related files.

I'm sorry that these ideas are a bit lightweight, but everything else I thought of you've already tried and/or Ainwood has suggested.

Except for buying a new computer.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Good suggestions. I emailed infogrames over the weekend and am waiting a reply. I did not try to search all .inf files and will do so. The only civ files/folders on my system are a collection of downloads from this site. There are all zip files or the various patches. Do you think that the exe patch files could be the problem? If so that would be very funny. "Hiding in plain sight."

Since I reinstalled xp I lost all my old restore points. I will keep you posted, thanks fo the help.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Good suggestions. I emailed infogrames over the weekend and am waiting a reply. I did not try to search all .inf files and will do so. The only civ files/folders on my system are a collection of downloads from this site. There are all zip files or the various patches. Do you think that the exe patch files could be the problem? If so that would be very funny. "Hiding in plain sight."

Since I reinstalled xp I lost all my old restore points. I will keep you posted, thanks fo the help.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Success!!
This evening I moved all my civ downloads off the c drive and searched all .ini files for "civ" One turned up. A setup ini file in the install shield folder under program files was related to civ 3. I'm betting that it was the ini file and not the downloads causing the problem.

The game loaded fine and seems to play, so its on to upgrades etc. Thanks very much for your help; the ini insight was right on target.

Best regards

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by Birdjaguar
Success!!

Finally!

 

[Aggie]

Originally posted by Birdjaguar
Success!!
This evening I moved all my civ downloads off the c drive and searched all .ini files for "civ" One turned up. A setup ini file in the install shield folder under program files was related to civ 3. I'm betting that it was the ini file and not the downloads causing the problem.

The game loaded fine and seems to play, so its on to upgrades etc. Thanks very much for your help; the ini insight was right on target.

Best regards

I have the exact same problem that Birdjaguar had. I also have XP Pro. I followed all the steps he posted in this thread, but I'm stuck. I still can't uninstall CIV3. After I deleted the CIV3 directory and the registry entries, I obiously overlooked something, because it's still listed in the windows control panel. When I try to remove it there, I get: 'Error installing iKernel.exe: (0x10000)'.

Anyone an idea how to solve this? Please!