SoU - Invalid Pointer error and can't update

[Anonymous Jack]

Hi,
I'm asking here because I keep forgetting to bring my CD Key to work
so I can check the support at BioWare.

I have NWN v.1.10 and SoU 1.30. When I install SoU, I get the
"Invalid Pointer Operation" error. I think I worked around this the
first time around by replacing either the SoU version of nwn.exe or
nwmain.exe with the original NWN version - as a matter of fact, I've
played through SoU.

When BioWare released its 1.32 patch that fixes this, I downloaded the
patch at work and brought it home. I was unable to update it. The
updater aborts after it doesn't find an internet connection, and
updating the updater to 1.19 didn't help - and no, I didn't unzip the
files before updating; I can follow directions :-).

Can't remember why exactly (started this several months ago) but I
completely uninstalled and reinstalled NWN and SoU (several times
now). But now, the previous workaround doesn't work anymore. I can
get to where NWN recognizes SoU as a module, but can't access anything
there because it was made using a newer toolset than NWN OC.

Any ideas on how I can get back into SoU? TIA

[Visceral_Syn]

there is a huge ( 77mb, called a Critical Rebuild ) 1.31 patch, should be
able to pull it off of bioware's site. try it before 1.32, i had to do mine
this way. My last re-install however worked fine.

...Syn...

[Anonymous Jack]

Post by Visceral_Syn
there is a huge ( 77mb, called a Critical Rebuild ) 1.31 patch, should be
able to pull it off of bioware's site. try it before 1.32, i had to do mine
this way. My last re-install however worked fine.

Thanks, Syn. So - just to be sure I understand - You installed SoU,
installed the 1.31 Critical Rebuild, then patched to 1.32?

Then you reinstalled SoU without having to go through that? What was
different the second time around?

Kinda bizarre how (apparently) inconsistent the software behaves. I
was able to replace either NWN.exe or NWMAIN.exe with an older version
from NWN OC when I first installed SoU to work around this problem,
but not able to successfully repeat this time around.

[Anonymous Jack]

Tried running the critical rebuild, didn't work for me. I can get past
the invalid pointer error, but nwmain.exe doesn't run. Thanks anyway.

Finally brought in my CD keys and registered with BioWare; we'll see
what happens. In the meantime, has anyone else had problems with one
of the following (and how were you able to resolve it?):

1) Can't patch when running updater (placed zipped patch file in the
install directory, ran updater - both 1.10 and the latest 1.19 - and
updater just says it can't detect an internet connection and aborts).
It can't detect a connection because there isn't one - no Internet
access at home in the boonies. However, I thought it should be able
to detect the presence of the zipped patch in the install directory
and unzip it. Say - has anyone manually patched this?

2) Invalid Pointer error after installing SoU and NWmain.exe doesn't
do anything. The normal fixes for the invalid pointer error are to
either update to the latest patch or to run nwmain.exe instead of
nwn.exe. Neither works for me. I thought that I had worked around
this before, but I can't get older versions of nwmain.exe to work
either.

[erect featherless biped]

<snip>

Post by Anonymous Jack
1) Can't patch when running updater (placed zipped patch file in the
install directory, ran updater - both 1.10 and the latest 1.19 - and
updater just says it can't detect an internet connection and aborts).
It can't detect a connection because there isn't one - no Internet
access at home in the boonies. However, I thought it should be able
to detect the presence of the zipped patch in the install directory
and unzip it. Say - has anyone manually patched this?
<snip>

are you sure youve got the correct patch file? I had to d/l the massive
(75mb) file before I could update
efb

[Anonymous Jack]

Post by erect featherless biped
<snip>

Post by Anonymous Jack
1) Can't patch when running updater (placed zipped patch file in the
install directory, ran updater - both 1.10 and the latest 1.19 - and
updater just says it can't detect an internet connection and aborts).
It can't detect a connection because there isn't one - no Internet
access at home in the boonies. However, I thought it should be able
to detect the presence of the zipped patch in the install directory
and unzip it. Say - has anyone manually patched this?
<snip>

are you sure youve got the correct patch file? I had to d/l the massive
(75mb) file before I could update
efb

IIRC, the massive (77mb?) file is the critical rebuild, which is an
executable. I was able to run it, but it didn't help. The 1.32 path
is a zipped file and considerably smaller.

Someone on the BioWare self help forum suggested that it was a
SecureROM issue with my CD drive. Could be, though I am using
Daemontools to run off an image and Daemontools has SecureROM
emulation enabled. I was able to install and run SoU from a different
(somewhat slower) PC in my bedroom, so I'll try using the version of
NWmain.exe from that install. Thanks!

[Anonymous Jack]

***@yahoo.com (Anonymous Jack) wrote in message news:<<snip>>

Got SoU to work finally. Ran several of the critical rebuilds and
saved various iterations of the NWmain.exe file, replacing it in the
install directory til I found one that works. What a PITA!

Still can't update, though. Oh well...

[Xocyll]

***@yahoo.com (Anonymous Jack) looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs

Post by Anonymous Jack
Got SoU to work finally. Ran several of the critical rebuilds and
saved various iterations of the NWmain.exe file, replacing it in the
install directory til I found one that works. What a PITA!
Still can't update, though. Oh well...

Are you trying to update via the automated link, or downloading the
patches and then updating locally?

I did the download/local and had no problem at all.

If that's what you did, could the file maybe not have come through
intact? I use Getright so I tend to get downloaded files properly.

I've done that 3 times now, once to update to 1.32, then to downgrade
from 1.32 to 1.31, then to downgrade to 1.30.
The downgrades were because of a bug in one of the towers in the city,
where it went into slideshow mode.

Xocyll

[Anonymous Jack]

Post by Xocyll
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs

Post by Anonymous Jack
Got SoU to work finally. Ran several of the critical rebuilds and
saved various iterations of the NWmain.exe file, replacing it in the
install directory til I found one that works. What a PITA!

Are you trying to update via the automated link, or downloading the
patches and then updating locally?
I did the download/local and had no problem at all.
If that's what you did, could the file maybe not have come through
intact? I use Getright so I tend to get downloaded files properly.

By download/local; no internet access at home (there's finally a local
number for dialup - I could pay for a line that can handle 28.8kbps
max, but why bother?). Pretty sure I got the complete files (I
downloaded both the NWN and SoU patches separately in case of problems
- I had an install on a different PC that was working fine while I was
fiddling with SoU to try and get it to work) but I am not using any
software such as Getright.

[Xocyll]

***@yahoo.com (Anonymous Jack) looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs

Post by Anonymous Jack

Post by Xocyll
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs

Post by Anonymous Jack
Got SoU to work finally. Ran several of the critical rebuilds and
saved various iterations of the NWmain.exe file, replacing it in the
install directory til I found one that works. What a PITA!

Are you trying to update via the automated link, or downloading the
patches and then updating locally?
I did the download/local and had no problem at all.
If that's what you did, could the file maybe not have come through
intact? I use Getright so I tend to get downloaded files properly.

By download/local; no internet access at home (there's finally a local
number for dialup - I could pay for a line that can handle 28.8kbps
max, but why bother?). Pretty sure I got the complete files (I
downloaded both the NWN and SoU patches separately in case of problems
- I had an install on a different PC that was working fine while I was
fiddling with SoU to try and get it to work) but I am not using any
software such as Getright.

It would probably be worth your while to get a download manager.
There's going to be times when the sever just hangs up on you.
With getright (and others) they do incremental saves so if you get cut
off at 99%, you only have to reconnect for the other 1% not start over.

The other thing is that sometimes when you lose connection, what you had
already is saved as though it were the whole file (and if you manually
unzipped - it would say it was corrupted.)
File managers know it wasn't finished so you don't run into that problem
and if it was their end that broke the link, the manager can reconnect
and finish getting the file. I think the worst so far was losing
connection to one site some 20+ times before the download finished.

Oh, and an address for you.
ftp://ftp.bioware.com/neverwinternights/patch/english/
All the nwn/sou patches are here and i'm assuming HotU patches will be
too.
You may find you need to downgrade from 1.32 to 1.30 in the crypt tower
in the city in SOU. There's a nasty bug of some kind and the game
drooped into slideshow mode - going back to 1.30 is the only fix till
the next patch comes.

Xocyll

[Anonymous Jack]

Post by Xocyll
It would probably be worth your while to get a download manager.
There's going to be times when the sever just hangs up on you.

Thanks - I do use StarDownloader on the rare occassion I download
anything from home (ie, when I break down and make a long distance
call to download something on my 28.8 connection -argh)

Post by Xocyll
The other thing is that sometimes when you lose connection, what you had
already is saved as though it were the whole file (and if you manually
unzipped - it would say it was corrupted.)

You know, I did manually unzip it to see if I could manually replace
individual files to patch. It didn't report any corrupted files,
though.

Post by Xocyll
Oh, and an address for you.
ftp://ftp.bioware.com/neverwinternights/patch/english/
All the nwn/sou patches are here and i'm assuming HotU patches will be too.

Thanks! I only found the most recent patches on the BioWare site;
don't have a lot of time to browse around.

Post by Xocyll
You may find you need to downgrade from 1.32 to 1.30 in the crypt tower
in the city in SOU. There's a nasty bug of some kind and the game
drooped into slideshow mode - going back to 1.30 is the only fix till
the next patch comes.
Xocyll

Thanks, Xocyll - you've been most helpful.

[Xocyll]

***@yahoo.com (Anonymous Jack) looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs

Post by Anonymous Jack

Post by Xocyll
It would probably be worth your while to get a download manager.
There's going to be times when the sever just hangs up on you.

Thanks - I do use StarDownloader on the rare occassion I download
anything from home (ie, when I break down and make a long distance
call to download something on my 28.8 connection -argh)

Post by Xocyll
The other thing is that sometimes when you lose connection, what you had
already is saved as though it were the whole file (and if you manually
unzipped - it would say it was corrupted.)

You know, I did manually unzip it to see if I could manually replace
individual files to patch. It didn't report any corrupted files,
though.

Ok, that's just weird. Maybe it was the wrong patch level than.
It seems to be really picky about having the exactly right patch - IE
there's one patch from original release to latest, and another one
that's for next-to-latest version to current version.
And of course the .zip has to be in the neverwinter directory.

I'm actually impressed with their upgrader, since it was smart enough to
notice that I was at 1.32, so it used the 1.32->1.31 patch, then noticed
that at 1.31 it should use the 1.31->1.30 patch.
Then when I went back to 1.32 (to play the 1.32 specific bridging
modules) it knew to use the 1.30->1.32 patch.

It did want to call home and check for more patches though after it did
the downloaded patch - which didn't impress me at all.

Post by Anonymous Jack

Post by Xocyll
Oh, and an address for you.
ftp://ftp.bioware.com/neverwinternights/patch/english/
All the nwn/sou patches are here and i'm assuming HotU patches will be too.

Thanks! I only found the most recent patches on the BioWare site;
don't have a lot of time to browse around.

I ran into the nasty bug and found that address listed on some webforum
after googling for a solution and bookmarked it for later.

Post by Anonymous Jack

Post by Xocyll
You may find you need to downgrade from 1.32 to 1.30 in the crypt tower
in the city in SOU. There's a nasty bug of some kind and the game
drooped into slideshow mode - going back to 1.30 is the only fix till
the next patch comes.

Thanks, Xocyll - you've been most helpful.

No problem at all, glad the info was of some use.

Xocyll