tswca

Apologize for the complete quote, but there is a lot in your post to comment on. Agreed, software should give better logs, but that goes for the installer as much as for Windows or AV programs; it's not "my PC", though, nor am I running outdated or flaky hardware... As you correctly concluded, the "culprit" in this case was indeed DEP. Changing the setting to "DEP for Windows and system programs only", (instead of enabling DEP for all executables) and rebooting did the trick. This time I carefully monitored the installation and checked the installer log. I noticed that the installer actually never writes to the Windows system directory and after installation, "Runservice.exe" still does not show up there. Only after the program runs for the first time does "Runservice.exe" magically appear in the system directory, as well as additional files "mmfs.dll" and "lcmmfu.cpl" (both "Copyright © 1998-2005 ViaTech Technologies Inc."). So it's not really the installer that's not working, it's DEP (legitimately, I think) preventing the program from running after installation when it tries to do something fishy. Seeing this, I'm not surprised the install is not working, DEP is likely working as designed by preventing execution of something that was treated as a data file before (e.g. by copying it into the Windows directory). The copyright notice also makes it pretty clear that the licensing technology pre-dates DEP (and UAC) and thus is not designed to deal correctly with modern OS security. I'm also not thrilled by it installing what is basically a fake control panel plugin and mucking about with Windows Update (got an unexplained log "AU received policy change subscription event" at install time). If I had to conclude anything about all this, the culprit is really an outdated installer and licensing software that behaves in very suspicious ways, not the OS protection mechanism. I don't think copying only runservice.exe to the Windows directory would work; at minimum, you'd also have to copy "mmfs.dll" and "lcmmfu.cpl". They probably also make other changes to the system. I think your comments regarding UAC and DEP are pretty misplaced. Requiring your users to disable OS safety mechanisms to install a game is just no longer an acceptable policy, IMO. UAC may be annoying, but certainly much less annoying than catching a root kit, trojan, or other malware infection and having to wipe your harddisk and reinstall everything. Overall, I think the "problematic behavior I'm seeing" is EXACTLY in "your code", not in my PC (hardware or software). I agree, "It's bad programming really...", but not in the OS for once.

I agree, that's what it looks like. But it's all part of the same installer and only few others seem to experience this issue. Something odd is going on here.

Thanks for the help!

OK, so let's assume "runservice.exe" ISN'T there to be exempted from DEP. This has happened to me on three different machines now (Win XP and 7) and there was never any notice that anti-virus or anything else had blocked its installation. One of the machines didn't even have any anti-virus installed yet... Do you have any suggestion how to get this installed in the right place? Is there a separate installer or installer option to force-install it?

Thanks for your comment, I'm glad to hear I'm not alone. I tried to follow the advice posted earlier (it's also in the BattleFront help section pointed to by the EOS readme file, by the way), but was not able to find any trace of the "runservice.exe" executable. It's not anywhere in my Windows directory, any of the programs directories (including the EOS install directory), or the whole hard drive (did a full search on all of these). According to some references I found on the web, runservice.exe is "part of the eLicense licensing system", so I would assume it should be installed by the EOS demo installer. Very odd... Before you ask, yes, I did install this from an administrator account.

I really, really want to like this game, I used to play the original text-based Empire, as well as Empire Deluxe, and this version seems like a great attempt to bring these up-to-date. I learned about the game only yesterday and immediately downloaded the demo. Today, I tried to install it on two different Windows versions, Windows 7 64-bit and Windows XP Pro 32 bit (Core i7 desktop and Lenovo Core2 Duo laptop), and I'm not able to start the game at all; I can't get it to go past "error 0xc00000005". As the other users, I tried all compatibility modes, installing and running as administrator, as well as DEP work-arounds, all to no avail. By the way, there is no "runservice.exe" file anywhere on my machine for either WinXP or Win7. All my machines have hardware DEP turned on for all programs (except for specified exceptions, e.g. EOS.exe) and this is something I'm not willing to compromise. I don't understand how or why a brand-new game released today would require turning off DEP or require installation with administrator privileges (I won't even dwell on the pre-historic install program that doesn't even register the game properly). This is simply inexcusable (IMHO) from a system security perspective. Please, please, please fix this game so it works properly on modern hardware and operating systems. - Thomas