Ah, I love it when my first post on a game forum is "I can't get this game to even install" rather than "OMG this game is awesome" but sometimes this just happens.

Anyhow, vital statistics:
Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1
4GB RAM
Nvidia GT 220 with 1GB RAM
Computer model is a Medion Akoya E7330D (stock configuation), which despite being a European brand, I am operating from the sunny nation of Australia.

Description of fault:

Firstly, when I load the install file, it takes a great deal of time to show any response. The hard drive begins thrashing almost immediately, however, it takes approximately 2 minutes before any sort of process actually appears in the Windows Task Manager.

Eventually, the install screen comes up, along with all the legal stuff (don't swear, don't be mean, don't hack, don't reverse engineer etc etc.) after I agree to it, it asks where to install the game. I typically choose "C:\Program Files\Mabinogi" since I like to keep all my executables in the Program Files directory (Microsoft Security Policy recommends this, I am told).

At this point, the progress bar down the bottom will slowly creep towards 100%. Once it's done, a blank dialog box appears with "OK" written on it. This doesn't fill me with confidence as clicking unknown dialog windows on a program running as administrator is a pretty good way to do awful things to your computer. However, I feel somewhat trusting, so I do this.

Only then, the installer starts again.

Legal agreement, where do you want your files, etc etc. Only this time, once you specify the location, it immediately says that Mabinogi is installed and you may start the game immediately.

Now, if I select "Start Game" the game runs. There is 3D graphics of some manner of fantasy hill fort, a pleasingly jaunty tune begins playing through my headphones and a request for my Nexon ID. I would like to stress this point since some things I say later will cause some wailing and gnashing of teeth along the lines of "Oh, you broke it you silly ignorant user" and I wish to stress that the game boots and runs perfectly fine provided it is invoked by the installation routine so it is quite emphatically clear that no, I have not broken it, as there is a successful proof of concept of it running.

Here is the real problem - The game will only boot and run when it is invoked by this first installation. Thereafter, any and all attempts to access files in the directory I have installed Mabinogi to will get an error from Windows saying that I do not have permission to access them. This is incorrect as I have carefully checked the access permissions on that directory and all the files in it and they are perfectly normal for Program Files. Limited Users may read and execute, administrators have full access. The result is the same regardless of whether I access these files as a Limited User or as an Administrator.

Having looked into it in several ways, the best that I can determine is that the files are simultaneously there and not there. The folder itself does not appear in Explorer with a normal folder icon, but instead with a generic application icon. Windows does not seem to recognise it as a folder or indeed the content as files. When I delete them, they don't go into the recycle bin, they just vanish.

As such, I'm not sure where the installer actually installs these files to, or indeed if it installs them anywhere (however, the RAM usage does not go up noticeably, so I can only presume they are somewhere) but it does not appear to be where I instruct it to.

One thing I have noticed is that after the first time it "installs" there is nothing to the directories in which I have instructed it to install Mabinogi, this is despite it taking a considerable amount of time with noticable disk activity. The files only appear in explorer after the "Directory" dialogue appears a second time, after which, in the space of a couple of seconds, 1.2 GB of data magically appears within the directory I indicate the second time. While my computer is pretty new, I can confidently say such a thing is quite beyond its data transfer speeds (which are actually quite mediocre). The data will appear in the directory which I specify the second time the installation program appears, regardless of whether it is the same or different to the first time and regardless of where it may be. This would appear to indicate that any actual writing of content to hard drive either happens in the period before the installer even appears, or during the period between the two times when I am prompted as to what directory I want the game to be installed to.



Steps already taken to attempt to correct the problem:
Rebooting (well, it was worth a try).
Installing the program to the default direct specified instead of within Program Files.
Downloading the installer again, in case the one I downloaded was corrupted. (First time was with the download utility, the second time by the direct download from website)
Running the installer in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode.
Making absolutely sure there's no other applications running and that I don't alt-tab out of the installation program while it's running.
Checking my firewall and antivirus settings to make sure that the programs are not being interfered with (I've explicitly given them unfettered access, they are left well alone). I should note that any suggestions I deactivate my security software entirely will be met with scorn and ridicule as the true purpose of such suggestions is to make annoying customers go away by convincing them to voluntarily turn their computer into a botnet zombie.

So far, no actions I have taken in an attempt to remedy this have had any effects on the behaviour of the program. It installs the files to some unknown location (Windows Task Manager identifies the programs as being in the location I specified, however) and starts the game successfully when I ask it to. However, it leaves no icon on the desktop or in Windows Game Explorer and any attempts to run Mabinogi result in an error message from Windows claiming I have insufficient access permissions, even when Administrator access is invoked.



Is there an alternate version of the installer which works by more conventional means such as Windows Installer (MSI) Or Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS)? If so, could you please contact me with information as to how I may get a hold of it. I imagine that a more conventional installation method would be the easiest way of solving the problems I am having. Although if my problems are a known issue with a reliable known fix, that is fine, too (I have attempted to find a situation similar to mine on the forums, but so far have not. However, that doesn't mean it hasn't happened before).



Thanks for your patience if you've read all this and endured my considerable snarkiness. Avoiding the use of profanity for a problem as vexing as this has been difficult.

This is one of the few times I'm going to say that a smaller report would have been better. It's nice that you put all that information in, but it doesn't really help.

First lets address the speed issue:

If the computer is brand new, it should not be running slow, period. However PC manufacturers love to shove crapware on the systems. Likewise Norton, Mcafee or some other mediocre antivirus/anti-malware solution. Uninstall any of the crapware you don't use or need.

Mabi, should not be installed into "Program Files", Windows protects the Program Files and Program Files (x86) directories from applications writing to it unless they are the administrator user. If you really do not want a C:\Nexon, create a C:\Games instead, and install your games there. That is at least what I do so when I reformat a computer, I can just reinstall the game to that place, and then copy the old directory back over.

 Second, double-installation? Patience. When I installed Mabi into VMWare to try and confirm this, it does appear to have a double installer, however the second run could also have simply been double clicking on it twice, where the first time it's unpacking it somewhere, and the second time it's already unpacked, hence why it appears to load twice.

Once installed, it should download current patches and then let you play.

You may want to uninstall the game, that should remove it from "wherever" you don't know it is at. Then reinstall.

 If you want to tinker with regedit, look at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Ahnlab\HShield

 and

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Nexon\Mabinogi

to see where they say they are installed.

---

IGN: Kisai (Alexina)
Level: 1100+
r1 Spirit of Order
Dan 3 WM
Dan 1 IB
IS,FB,TH, and AR activated
Ideal for Simon, Manus, Muro and others

I admittedly have a tendency to use twenty words when one would do. I blame being from a cultural background whose indigenous language lacks words for "yes" and "no". Although this problem was so bizarre I felt that a detailed description would be helpful.

I've definitely got rid of the crapware, that's always the first thing I do when I buy a new PC, I probably should have said that the stock configuration was stock hardware, not stock software. Alas, this includes rather slow RAM and a cheap hard drive which probably has less cache than normal. But since this tends to effect only load times and not actual game performance, I can live with it. I was merely highlighting that it was incapable of writing 1.2GB in the space of a couple of seconds.

I see what you mean with regards to the installation directory. I'm pretty sceptical of the design decision to put user data in the program directory rather than somewhere in the user directory (since the latter's been Microsoft SOP for about 10 years now) but at least there's some method to that madness.

The registry keys you mention aren't actually there. That leads me to suspect that Output (my firewall) has been a little too overzealous in its host protection. During early stages of the install it warned me the installer was modifying critical registry components, which I told it to block. Every other game I've installed so far (which has been quite a few) hasn't been negatively affected by blocking that, so I figured this was yet another case of sloppy code messing with my registry integrity unecessarily.

I'm presently purging it of all references to Mabinogi in an attempt to recreate this condition so I can see what registry keys it was referring to (I wasn't paying much attention at the time) and I noticed something interesting. Mabinogi is apparently being installed to a temp directory. This would explain why it runs when invoked by the installer but not thereafter. The installer is doing something strange that is causing it to write the files to a temp directory but create phantom filesystem entries in the directory that I ask it to install to.

As for the double installation, I shall invoke the installer using the enter key rather than the mouse to make absolutely sure I'm not accidentally running it twice. I very much doubt that's what was happening, as I would have noticed a duplicate process in the Windows Task Manager.

Alas, despite the measures I have described in the last post, the behaviour of the install program remains totally unchanged.

I am now increasingly convinced that it is installing to a temp directory, despite my intructing it not to. Twice.

It's like reading a story o_o

But anyway, I experienced the same problem when I was using vista back then. I figured the reason why the installer takes 3 minutes to load is probably the freaking UAC. It takes hella long for UAC to load the program and then dim your desktop. You can try to install your mabinogi on desktop to see if that helps because as Tenshi said, stupid Vista prevents anyone from modifying the program files and it will put the things into the temp files. In short, try disable UAC and then install mabi on desktop if that helps.

If it's possible to change operating system, that would help too.

---

Server: Mari
...But who cares? ;o

Installers, always unpack to a temporary directory first. They usually do something like:

Download self-extractor

extract to $temp\extractorname

execute installer

copy files from extracted location to install target

make shortcuts

delete files from $temp

 

So if it's being installed to a temporary directory, then it is because no path has been given, hence it's installing to "where i am now"

 

 

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IGN: Kisai (Alexina)
Level: 1100+
r1 Spirit of Order
Dan 3 WM
Dan 1 IB
IS,FB,TH, and AR activated
Ideal for Simon, Manus, Muro and others

@inamatrix - I had not considered your proposed course of action (installing the game to desktop) as it flew violently in face of common sense.

 Naturally, it worked perfectly! Next time I need a hand understanding the strange ways of DevCAT's programmers, I know who to bug. (Between their strange attempts to mess with the filesystem so their directory is represented by an icon and their failure to disable Nagle's algorythm, I can't help but wonder just what operating system they're trying to design for - it's clearly not Windows!)

 UAC still remains, as it's something of a "Cold, dead hands" matter with me. It causes me no issues, but I'm lucky enough to have a good friend who is a sysadmin and able to show me how Microsoft would like people to use their computers (life would be a lot easier for many people if Microsoft took the simple expedient of actually telling people but I guess that'd be too easy for them).

 Also, yeah, I am wordy as hell. I blame that on my cultural background - never use one word when 20 will do. I drive some of my bosses at work round the bend when I send emails because of this. Still, I love to subvert the myth of Gen Y's being all "LOL TXT SPK BRDRLINE ILLITR8!"