Installed MVP Baseball 2005 and my computer won't boot

[pgregory]

Hi, I'd really appreciate any help with this. I bought MVP 2005 when it first came out and really enjoyed it. I used the mods from this site last year to play it also. My computer I used at those times died and I bought another a few months ago. My current computer is;

HP a1450n

AMD 4200 Athlon X2 64 dual core processor

Windows XP Media Center Edition SP2

2G ram

EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO 256m video card

The other day I finally got around to installing MVP 2005 on my computer. I did not install it on my C drive, instead installing it on my E drive where all of my games are installed (I try to keep my C Drive relatively small so I can make Ghost images that aren't too huge). When I rebooted my computer it got to the Windows XP boot screen (with the colored dots moving from left to right under the "Windows XP" logo) and it just stopped there. It wouldn't progress any further. I started the computer in safe mode and couldn't find anything wrong and restarted again with the same result. Finally I used Ghost to reinstall my C drive to an earlier state with the result that it booted up just fine. I tried reinstalling MVP 2005, then before rebooting I installed the Patch from EA Sports from 3/05. When I rebooted it hung again at the same spot. I repeated all this again and tried to install the MLB07 mod (MLB07.rar) but was told the extracted file "install.exe" was corrupt. Before I download that and reinstall my C drive for the fourth time, has anyone run into this? I'm wondering if I can even get it to run on this computer or should just give up. I have about 12 games on this computer running without any problems (From Civilization IV to Silent Hunter III to Medieval Total War II, etc).

Thanks in advance for any help.

PG

[MarkB]

Sounds as if your HDD may be on the way out. Do you have any form of H.P. diagnostics you can run on the disk?

If not, try running chkdsk from the Recovery Console.

[krawhitham]

I'm not saying you did or anything, but a version of MVP going around the normal download areas will make your system NOT boot

I have no idea who created it :whistle:

[stEdfuNk]

but he bought it ;] piracy is badd!!!

[pgregory]

MarkB & krawhitham,

Thanks for the replies. Sorry for the delay getting back, couldn't get to a computer over the weekend. I'll try some HDD diagnostics. I'd be surprised if that's it because the computer is less than a year old. Previously I ran it on my now dead computer that ran XP Pro, and was wondering if XP Media Center had any known problems.

As to your well put, and legitimate comment krawhitham, and stEdfuNk's rather crude one, I'm using a store bought copy of MVP 2005. I bought a copy each year they came out (to get that year's roster) and didn't even know of this group until EA Sports stopped making the game or stopped providing rosters. Prior to MVP Baseball, I BOUGHT High Heat Baseball each year. If anyone would like, I'd be happy to scan the original disc, CD case or even oversized box it came in and upload or email it to you. I could probably dig out my old copies of MVP04, MVP03 and High Heat discs (not sure when I switched from High Heat to MVP). Let me know where to email/post the image(s). Hope this satisfies the board's apparent software policeman stEdfuNk.

I don't pirate software.

PG

[carter]

pgregory, I just want to get something straight. If you uninstall the game will your computer boot normally?

If so, try backing up the game files (from the MVPBaseball2005 folder and from your MyDocuments folder) to DVD or another partition and then uninstall the game. After you reboot, but the game back in the desired location. The whole point of all this is that you don't need to have MVP Baseball related data in your registry (and that may be what's causing your problems).

[BigPaPa]

that really is odd and i like you cant see your HDD going after so little time. It might be something to do with the registry. You might try running a registry cleaning piece of software after installation (i recommend Win Iso) and check if it wants to delete any of the MVP registry entries.

[pgregory]

Carter & BigPaPa,

Thanks for the replies. I can't uninstall the game once I install it, because the only way I can reboot is in Safe Mode and it doesn't allow me to uninstall programs in that mode. But I like your ideas about the registry. Since the game runs when I finish the install (nothing seems to go wrong until I reboot the computer), do you think I could back up the registry, install the game, then BEFORE rebooting restore the registry?

If so, do you have any recommendations on a utility to restore the registry? I used to use Norton Systemworks but have abandoned everything Norton (except Norton Ghost) because of the drag it puts on my system. I've never done a registry restore using Windows XP's registry program (if there is one).

Thanks again for the help,

pg

[BigPaPa]

well

1) you dont need to reboot to uninstall

2) i reccomend you DL a trial for one of the registry checking software packages. They could find that the MVP ones are corrupted and ask you to delete them.

3) to restore the registry u can use system restore under Start/Accessories/System tools. YOu could also go into the regestry in sae mode and delete the MVP registry keys manually henceforth restoring your registry to a pre install state

[pgregory]

I just wanted to thank everyone for their help on this, especially "carter" and "BigPaPa" for their registry suggestions. I downloaded a free utility called "ERUNT - The Emergency Recovery Utility" and made backups of my registry, then forked over some cash for "Registry Mechanic" that would "Clean" my registry. I was skeptical so the backup software helped, plus I had my trusty Ghost backup. Anyway, I ran Registry Mechanic and it came up with 1032 registry errors! I decided to let it repair them all figuring it would crash my system and I'd have to restore, but amazingly my system rebooted without a problem and everything seems to be working well. I then installed MVP05 and it runs just fine!. No hang on reboot. Pretty amazing. I'm surprised my system worked at all with that many registry errors. So far things seem to be going well. Now to install the mods and hopefully I'll be playing soon.

Thanks again for all the advice.

pg