(not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

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applebappu
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(not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by applebappu »

Hello everyone!

I've been using Love2D for quite a while, but lately I've had this strange issue with a particular install of the framework on a new PC. I still have a working install elsewhere, so like it says in the topic title, this isn't super urgent or anything. But it would be nice to have it working on this other computer, so that I can work on my game when I'm not at home (it's a desktop PC at my workplace, yes it's officially okay to have it installed, I asked, lol).

I don't believe this issue is with Love itself, hence the forum post instead of a bug report. In fact, together with some of my coworkers (I work in IT), we've tested it on other computers and it's worked out of the box on a raw install. But for some reason, it doesn't like my computer specifically. We've exhausted our troubleshooting abilities here, so I thought I'd toss it to you all and see if anyone's had similar issues before.

Okay! With all that said, here's the problem: No version of love.exe or lovec.exe will run on this PC, with or without a game. You double-click it, and nothing happens (technically, with lovec.exe, you get a brief flicker of a command line window that immediately closes).

This computer is running Windows 10, fully updated as of 6/24/2021 (today). It has an NVIDIA Quadro P400 GPU, with the latest drivers directly from NVIDIA's site. The CPU is an Intel Xeon E-2126G, 3.3GHz (and no, I don't know why our techs used a server CPU for my daily driver, lol). It has 8GB of RAM, which appears to be in a single stick:
RAM.png
RAM.png (24.08 KiB) Viewed 12619 times
Upon running either of the Love executables, Windows event viewer gives the following unhelpful error:
image.png
image.png (14.25 KiB) Viewed 12619 times
It's basically the same whether it's love.exe or lovec.exe, and those process IDs etc. change every time of course. They don't make reference to anything specific or helpful, and believe me I've looked.

Our org uses Cisco AMP for Endpoints as one component of our application and network security, and I've checked with the admins, who've shown me the blank logs; nothing is being blocked there. Nothing on the local side is blocking it, either; no Windows Security settings or anything like that.

Troubleshooting steps I've tried:
  • Updating GPU drivers and rebooting
  • Updating motherboard drivers and rebooting
  • Installing .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8, with reboots in between and after, etc.
  • Re-downloading the 11.3 Windows installer from love2d.org, clean install and reboot
  • Rolling back to earlier versions, tried every single version between 10.0 and 11.3
  • Having a coworker with a working install send me his folder directly
  • Trying every compatibility mode from Windows XP to Vista
  • Running the program as administrator (for each compatibility mode as well)
All to no avail. No dice. Nothin.

I suspect it's either:
  1. A missing dependency, or
  2. An issue with my CPU
With dependencies, I'm actually at a loss as to how to go about troubleshooting this in Windows. This kind of thing is trivial in Linux, but Windows lacks a sane package management solution. However, the official installer comes pre-built with all its needed dependencies, so I thought.

As for the CPU, I can't put my finger on a specific problem, but my gut tells me that Xeons aren't designed with consumer applications in mind, and there could be some mysterious compatibility thing going on there. It's worth mentioning that I've tried running Godot (another game development framework) on this machine as well, and it also doesn't launch.

So! That's what I've got. It's stumped our org's IT people, myself included. Any wizards out there have a known solution, or any ideas that I could try?
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zorg
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by zorg »

I also have a Xeon in my desktop, and all (64-bit) löve versions work for me, so that's not necessarily the issue imo; it could be the Quadro GPU as well, since that's also not necessarily designed for gaming in mind (it's not a GeForce, after all) - regardless of having its drivers be up-to-date.

Anyway, i'll assume you did try, but if not, run either exe from the command line / powershell, since that will be retained even after a crash; see if you get an error message like that.
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applebappu
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by applebappu »

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't think of that, thanks!

Unfortunately, no dice there as well, no new information. This is all I get:
ps.png
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ps2.png
ps2.png (2.1 KiB) Viewed 12570 times
Is there maybe a verbose mode flag I don't know about, that could spit something else out?

It's good to know that the Xeon isn't necessarily the source of the problem. Though, I'd never actually heard of the Quadro before using this workstation, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that may be another potential point of failure.
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zorg
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by zorg »

Not sure if löve's capable of using the powershell as it's... shell? terminal?
I'd also try it with cmd, just to make sure.

I don't know about a verbose flag though, there is a flag to just dump out the version though, but i can't recall what it was, maybe the obvious: -version
Me and my stuff :3True Neutral Aspirant. Why, yes, i do indeed enjoy sarcastically correcting others when they make the most blatant of spelling mistakes. No bullying or trolling the innocent tho.
applebappu
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by applebappu »

Good idea. Still no dice, though.
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AuahDark
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by AuahDark »

Does the nightly works (in GitHub)? If not then do you have windbg? I probably can send you LOVE build with PDB to test and you can get the backtrace from there.
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applebappu
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by applebappu »

That's an excellent idea. I'm grabbing windbg right now. Could you please send me the build with PDB? It's time to do a deeper dive.

edit: I forgot to mention that I'm grabbing the source right now as well to compile and test.
applebappu
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by applebappu »

First: I apologize for the doublepost bump. I ran love.exe through windbg and this is the output:
crashdump.png
crashdump.png (73.81 KiB) Viewed 8738 times
It looks to me as though the issue is with this winmmbase.dll (some quick googling tells me it's some sort of multimedia API), and the break exception code seems to maybe indicate a memory issue, I dunno. I'm still new to Windows debugging, though. Any ideas?

edit: winmmbase.dll does appear to exist where it's being looked for.
Window.png
Window.png (9.21 KiB) Viewed 8735 times
I managed to get a replacement winmmbase.dll from a coworker, and have been trying to use regsvr32 to install it, but I'm running into all kinds of weird permissions errors that nobody on my IT team seems to be able to figure out a way round. God I miss my home Linux machine rn.

As a last-ditch effort, I tried sfc to see if maybe it could just fix any corrupted dlls. No dice.

Given that Windows also "fixed" the USB drive I've been carting my project back and forth on, and now it won't mount in WSL, I think I'm about done trying to work on my project at work. I can't risk losing everything I'm working on just because Windows sucks ass. I'll leave this thread open, though, just in case anyone has ideas for future people running into this.
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milon
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Re: (not urgent) Love2D.exe not starting on a particular PC

Post by milon »

One way to update/replace Windows system components is to create a rescue boot disc/USB (ie. https://www.system-rescue.org/). Also add the file(s) that you want installed on your Windows system. When you boot from the disc/USB, your Windows files won't be in use and you can freely update them.

(I feel your pain! My one work office uses Windows exclusively. Makes me miss my awesome Linux too!)
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