Windows Vista Hello, games launcher has stopped working, can't launch my puzzle games.

I am a 68 years old, retired female and am an intermediate on PC's. This April I bought a new HP, Vista Home Premium OS, and it's suposed to be good for running games and other entertainment programs. I bought 4 puzzle games from POGO.com, and now a sign comes up... "Game launcher has stopped working correctly. Windows will close this program and notify you if a solution is available" Any ideas? Thanking you in advance, Frada

 

Hello fradatardar,

Before we see if this may be Vista related, let's first check if it may be game related.....

Use pogo.com help:
http://help.pogo.com/
type in vista on the search line
Read carefully the first two links that come up, entitled
1]windows vista compatibility mode
2]running games in vista

That being said can you tell me which games these are?

 

Dear Ann,
Thank you for responding so fast! The games all worked yeasterday till a dep message came up and I changed a few things as it suggested and then I found out the games can not be launched.
The Pogo games are....JEWEL QUEST SOLITAIRE, TRI PEAKS 2 QUEST FOR THE RUBY RING, 4 ELEMENTS, and AMAZING ADVENTURES FOR THE LOST TOMB.
I tried restore, but it wouldn't go but a day back to restore.
Thank you, Fran

 

Hello fradatardar,

I have quite a few oberon, reflexive etc., games but as luck would have it, none of the ones you have mentioned. I did download Jewel Quest Solitaire just to see if I would have the same problem but again, I am having no problem running the game.

Strange that they ran yesterday but not today. Have you tried:
*Cleaning temps (tmp),
*A shutdown/reboot,
*A virus/malware scan,
*Shutting down or endtasking on any program, running in the background, that may be causing a compatibilty problem
*Installed or unistalled anything new, other than the games?

There are a few things I can suggest as follows:

Dep settings as follows:
*Open Advanced system settings (Start > Control Panel > System, then click Advanced system settings under Tasks.
*On the Advanced tab, click the Settings button under the Performance header. Select the Data Execution Prevention tab, and check that Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only is selected.
*If you are running Dep with the 2nd option and want to continue doing so, add the games executables to the exceptions list.

I believe the game launcher that is crashing is the games launch.exe that the game shortcut points to. In trial mode this tells you how much time you have left before you have to buy a registration key. Try running the game's program directly. Go to the program files/Oberon folder of the game and try double-clicking on the game's exe file directly. (You may have to right-click this and choose the option of 'Run as administrator'. This option should be tried on any shortcut to the game also.) Could also do a right click>properties check and try the compatibilty mode options. I have not had a problem but this may be because our sound and video graphics differ.

Speaking of grahics, have you tried adjusting your display resolution? Just a thought.

I will look around and see if I can find some better solutions and will update post when I do.

 

Dear Ann, Thank you for all your suggestions. I have printed them off and will try them out now. I will report back to you, after I've tried them.
Frada

 

Dear Ann, Wow! You solved it for me! I can play my games...Great time waster eh? It was the DEP, I had it checked off wrong! You are one smart cookie! Thank you ever so much for instantly helping me! How long have you been on computers. How come you know so much? I appreciate you. Take care...Frada

 

Yahoo!

I'm glad to see your problem is fixed. I'm just a plain old foggy who's computer (in- ) experience spans many years, many computers and many operating systems. The small bit of knowledge, I have, is "self taught ", or "fly by the seat of pants. Thank goodness for books and the web which fill the air in between my ears. I'm still looking for a way to keep it from escaping out of those same ears, though.

Thank you so much for the happy news and updating your post with the results. Your most welcome.