VN Boards Archive

[VN Boards Archive]

Welcome to the Vault Network forum archive.

This is not a complete archive, time didn't allot us the opportunity to properly backup the majority of the boards deemed "expendable". Most boards on this list have at least 20-40 pages archived (non-logged in pages, 15 topics per page).

Popular boards may have as many as 250 pages archived at 50 topics per page, while others deemed of historical signifigance may be archived in their entirety.

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Author

Topic: Decal Catastrophe - need advice

Churi-ya Posts: 5,149 Registered: Jul 9, '02 Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 5,026 User ID: 695,709	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	Ok up until yesterday afternoon, everything worked perfectly. Then I tried to install Virindi Tank. About 15 second into it, every one of my various watch-dog programs went crazy: Super Anti Spyware and AVG began shouting at me about malware. Well, it caught and isolated/deleted the offending programs files - but now decal won't work at all. What's worse, I can't delete Decal using the built in uninstaller, and it won't allow me to reinstall it (in both cases it tells me the path is invalid). This is even after carefully scrubbing my registry and manually going in and deleting every single decal file. I have run system restore to 3 different known safe spots - and no luck at all. I cannot open decal to give an export, as there is no Decal installed, but somehow the system is hung up in believing it is. I really, badly, terribly don't want to have to reformat to fix this, any ideas? I can play AC - that works fine. But I can't load Decal at all. And for me, AC without Decal is like driving without my glasses on - oh, I can DO it, it's just pita. -----signature----- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - DM for 28 Years! Asheron's Call: Bleys Icefalcon; Monarch of Renaissance - on Harvestgain If you want someone to be politically correct, I suggest not engaging me in conversation.
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Ball-Cruncher Posts: 5,871 Registered: Aug 28, '04 Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 5,860 User ID: 961,024	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	Your AV is probably preventing the files from being reinstalled. Turn them off and try reinstalling. -----signature----- T C M In-Game as Bluballz or Vash
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Grafix_GS Posts: ???? Registered: ???? Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 0 User ID: 0	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	By system restore, I'm assuming you mean the built in Windows one (and also assuming Windows XP)...start by turning that off. It's garbage, almost never helps, and is actually a very nice backdoor for Viruses and Spyware to wreak havoc on your machine. That aside, try restarting your machine in safe mode, and see if you can uninstall Decal from the add/remove programs once in safe mode. If you can, great, you should then be able to reinstall. If not, in safe mode, delete the directory for Decal, and remove the entry in the registry for Decal (HKLM/Software/Decal). That should manually remove everything necessary in Decal to allow you to reinstall it. -----signature-----
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Churi-ya Posts: 5,149 Registered: Jul 9, '02 Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 5,026 User ID: 695,709	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	Cruncher - I completely disabled all my watchdog, same thing. Graphix - it wouldn't let me un-instal in safe mode, so I went in and deleted everything, including all the decal related registry keys. When I went to reinstall decal, now I have these errors: "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resourse that is unavalable" "Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package 'Decal[1].msi' in the box below" I browse for said file, it ain't nowhere. Any ideas? -----signature----- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - DM for 28 Years! Asheron's Call: Bleys Icefalcon; Monarch of Renaissance - on Harvestgain If you want someone to be politically correct, I suggest not engaging me in conversation.
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Grafix_GS Posts: ???? Registered: ???? Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 0 User ID: 0	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	Gotta love the MSI methods of installing when things don't work (sarcasm of course...often times I think the old setup.exe method was so much better, when things like this happen). Anyhow, most likely, there is something in the registry still pointing to a previously installed version of Decal. That being the case, start at the very top of the registry (My Computer), and search for "decal", matching anything case-insensitive to find all instances. Remove any references to Decal in the registry. The other suggestion I have, which is actually something that is nice to do every now and then anyhow, is download and run C-Cleaner (I recommend downloading from CNet's download.com website, so you know it doesn't come with any viruses or spyware addon junk). C-Cleaner will clean out any orphaned files, temp folders, registry entries that have been orphaned, etc. It most likely won't improve the speed of a machine, but it will prevent possible problems. Hope that gets you started back to the world of Decal. -----signature-----
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Hazridi Posts: 8,386 Registered: Mar 15, '01 Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 8,277 User ID: 74,558	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	You can download the msi at http://www.decaldev.com/Decal.msi and it may help you uninstall. MSI installers need a copy to uninstall for some inane reason. -----signature----- Hazridi of WE, VT, HG, SC Decal Core Dev - http://www.decaldev.com - Beta at http://www.decaldev.com/beta
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Churi-ya Posts: 5,149 Registered: Jul 9, '02 Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 5,026 User ID: 695,709	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	Whelp, copied the downloaded file, and same two error messages come up, even when I point it at the file. Also, I went in and painstakingly deleted each and every key in my registry even relotely pointing to/at decal. Still stuck. -----signature----- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - DM for 28 Years! Asheron's Call: Bleys Icefalcon; Monarch of Renaissance - on Harvestgain If you want someone to be politically correct, I suggest not engaging me in conversation.
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Hazridi Posts: 8,386 Registered: Mar 15, '01 Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 8,277 User ID: 74,558	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	Yeah, that's an msi problem. Msi installers are pretty easy to mess up, and manually removing things from the registry actually usually only makes the problems worse. I don't know of a solution to fix the MSI installer, unfortunately, but you can run decal without installing it. Since you are technically proficient, here's how: copy a decal installation from another PC onto your PC. Also, on that other PC -- in regedit, right click on the HKLM\Software\Decal key and choose export, save this reg file to your PC and import the settings. Next you are going to have to run Regsvr32.exe on the COM dlls that are a part of Decal - this is Decal.dll, DecalFilters.dll, DecalInput.dll, DecalNet.dll, DecalRender.dll, DecalControls.dll, D3DService.dll, DecalDat.dll, Inject.dll, SpellFilter.dll, and DHS.dll. Now you should be able to run DenAgent and update and have a working install of Decal. You may need to add Decal.FileService.dll to the Global Assembly Cache with gacutil.exe. You will probably also have to add all of the policy Dlls to the GAC as well. It's a lot of work, but probably better than reinstalling windows. -----signature----- Hazridi of WE, VT, HG, SC Decal Core Dev - http://www.decaldev.com - Beta at http://www.decaldev.com/beta
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Churi-ya Posts: 5,149 Registered: Jul 9, '02 Extended Info (if available) Real Post Cnt: 5,026 User ID: 695,709	Subject: Decal Catastrophe - need advice
	Allrighty, let's see if that works - thanks. -----signature----- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - DM for 28 Years! Asheron's Call: Bleys Icefalcon; Monarch of Renaissance - on Harvestgain If you want someone to be politically correct, I suggest not engaging me in conversation.
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