SolvedCampaign crash at start. FIXED and CAUSE DISCOVERED !!!

Sladestro

I and many others have been having an issue with starting any campaign. After the initial cinematic we press "Continue" and the campaign map should start but we crash. This happens with the prolog as well.

A work around is having a friend save a game at turn 1 and send it to you. I personally found that the first time you enter a daemon god's realm I experienced the same issue using this work around.

THE ISSUE IS HAVING AN AMPERSAND IN YOUR USERNAME!

This is on windows 10. Note simply changing your account name will not work.

@CA I'm no coder but I am a Sysadmin. I think the issue is in the file structure as the bug did not resolve until I changed the folder located at "C:\Users\"user & user" *note: remove quotes.

FIXES for players

1) make a new user account without an ampersand "&"

2) WHAT I DID to make it work on your current account... This one is involved. WARNING! Back up / create a system restore point as changing anything in your registry can royally mess up your system.

a) login with admin permissions and: go to control panel (large icons) > user accounts > click the account and change the name to something without an ampersand "&"

b) open task manager > go to file and run new task > type in the window "cmd" and check the "create task as admin" box > click okay

c) in the command prompt type "wmic useraccount list full" > this will list a bunch of accounts. look in the name field for your exact account. it will look like this "name=word amp&; word" where "amp&;" is your ampersand is in your name. in that entry find the "SID=S-1-########" and make note of it. write it down or copy paste it somewhere.

d) in search type "regedit" and run as admin > in the window navigate down the file tree on the left to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList" > here you will find a folder with the exact SID number you found before. click the folder and find the entry in the right window called "ProfileImagePath" and change the part with your old username to your new one.

e) Restart. Your profile will look jacked up. everything will be missing. do not worry. go to "C:\Users". you will find here both your old name and your new one. cut and paste everything in the old name file to the new name file. be sure to include hidden files.

f) Restart again and log in. your profile should look like normal and now nothing contains the "&" symbol. At this point the bug was fixed.

HORVATH1982

YES!!!! Thanks that was the problem and the solution!!! Prologe and Campaign working fine now! THANXS!!!!

Blackwolfxxx

cant believe you fixed it - actually went to the realm of chaos. it was beautiful

#424262

I understood it fixes your problem but does it work on accounts that don't have an ampersand? like "username" or "nameone nametwo"?

I also have this exact problem of crashing on cinematics, prologue, and chaos realms but I want to make sure that is something I can rely on before messing up with renaming users. (I personally don't have an ampersand in the username, only a space).

KingDane

Barakiro said:

I understood it fixes your problem but does it work on accounts that don't have an ampersand? like "username" or "nameone nametwo"?

I also have this exact problem of crashing on cinematics, prologue, and chaos realms but I want to make sure that is something I can rely on before messing up with renaming users. (I personally don't have an ampersand in the username, only a space).

Tried making a new account as well to test if it made any difference, as i have the same issue as you. Have never had any ampersand in either accountnames, nor any other special characthers, so in my case, it made no difference.

Rigelpd

I have the same problem: crashes after the cinematic.
my pc username also has an & so this is a strong clue that this is the problem.

Now, if we have defined that this is the cause, is there hope to have this problem resolved with a patch? cause I dont want to have to change my pc username with the risk to brick my pc if I do something wrong...

Rootje78

I also have this symbol ampersand in my pc's useraccount and have the crash problem. I also do not want to change things in registry beacuse i ddont want to mess anything up which i wont be able to fix.

Hopefully there will be some official response, or patch if this was the fault.

Alexandrius

Same as Rigelpd and Rootje78. Can't afford to take chances since I use my personal PC for my work as well.

Although if Sladestro identified the root of the problem then a fix/patch should come for this.

sumofrog

Didn't mess with the registry, but creating a new user account with no ampersand did indeed fix it for me. Thank you for appeasing the demons in the magic box.

BillyRuffian#6250

According to this user it is not just ampersands that can cause this issue. It may happpen with any special characters.
https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/comment/3337002/#Comment_3337002

Maddred#6378

Man, don't make me laugh. Big corpo making game and do this really stupid mistake that can be fixed with simple profile name change... unbelievable!

Rootje78

sumofrog said:

Didn't mess with the registry, but creating a new user account with no ampersand did indeed fix it for me. Thank you for appeasing the demons in the magic box.

Ah yes! I also made an extra windows account which is simple. Now it works for me as wel, havent tested much but my campaign benchmark ran fine for the first time.

THANK YOU SLADESTRO!!!

Alexandrius

So... still no official fix on this?

Rootje78

I read in the progress blog on the next patch that they are working on this specific issue.

Alexandrius

Well in that case i hope they will release the patch soon. Wanted to play the "small" campaign a bit before switching to ME...

Rootje78

This was the article:

https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/308913/developer-diary-patch-1-0-2-ongoing-investigations

Buzby#1083

I know this is an old post, but just to add that the issue still occurs with the latest release 2.40 - my username had an "&" in it and the game would crash trying to run the campaign, or the campaign benchmark. No amount of driver updates, Windows updates, running as an admin, repairing system files etc etc made any difference.
In the end I followed the steps in the original post above and my problem is now resolved - and far as I can see it hasn't caused me any other issues on my PC, but of course your experience may vary so proceed at your own risk!

To clarify - the issue is a "&" in the username, so consequently the path to \The Creative Assembly\Warhammer3 folder (where all the user settings and preferences are stored) had a "&" in it. Perfectly valid as a username and folder name, but not compatible with Total War : Warhammer 3 campaign mode it would seem.

The other issue being mentioned above was when the game is INSTALLED into a folder with special characters in the name. This is a different issue, and it sounds like this one has been fixed (but I didn't have this issue, so I can't confirm that)

Hope this helps other people trying to find the problem and solution - because I wasted too much time trying to fix this before I found this post.

Thanks Sladestro.