The root element is missing

During the end fight of Don't Drink the Water, my screen froze. I was running solo.

When I restarted the computer I logged in, found I was dead. Finished out and came back to finish the fight (wanted my scale!)

Screen froze again.

After a hard restart the computer went to a blue screen with some mumbo-jumbo about dangerous lines of code and remove recent software.

Hard restart again and the game will no longer load. I get stuck on the password screen. I get a dialogue "The root element is missing."

Log in using another computer, everything fine.

Trying now to figure out how to fix. Wondering if anyone else had a similar problem?

Is there a way to re-download the launcher? That seems to be where the problem lies.

The very first thing you should do is run a virus/malware check.

The actual "root element is missing" error is in a support (XML) file somewhere, is likely something normally automatically generated and is likely not the root cause, but some sort of symptom, of a bigger problem.

The advice in the General Discussion forum about then making sure your video drivers are updated makes sense, as that's one possible cause of "freezing."

I did a full uninstall and reinstall of the game. After that it worked fine, for one night.

Tonight I can't log in again. When I add my password it just connects for a few seconds, then back to the password box.

Nothing else on the computer seems to be affected.

Oh yeah, no longer receiving that dialogue box, just popping back to the password box.

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Originally Posted by Djeserit

I did a full uninstall and reinstall of the game. After that it worked fine, for one night.

Tonight I can't log in again. When I add my password it just connects for a few seconds, then back to the password box.

Nothing else on the computer seems to be affected.

Oh yeah, no longer receiving that dialogue box, just popping back to the password box.

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When you say "it just connects for a few seconds", can you describe precisely what you mean?

And just to be safe did you remove and readd to firewall after running it once (and thereby updating the files) just to be sure any updated files were added to the firewall?

There is another thread, probably a better place to discuss this

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=405837

But, what happens is, the screen goes blank for a few seconds and shows an hourglass, then back to the desktop with the password box.

The reason I say it connects is that I tested it by logging in a world I haven't been on for months. When it booted me back to the password box, on the world list it said I had logged in 'today'.

I have manually added all the Turbine .exe back to the lists for the Windows firewall and my security system firewall.

Thanks for taking the time, this thing is making me crazy.

Ok, I went back and reread the threads. As far as I can tell, the problem first started when you were running Dont Drink The Water, your PC Froze and you hard-restarted.

If you did the firewall entries carefully enough let's rule that out for now.

Let's assume you did a virus/spyware check and for now let's assume all bad things are gone from that system..there still may well be remnants of damage done by any virus removed or even from the hard-reset.

Forgive this if its obvious, but you ran scandisk just to be on the safe side?

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Originally Posted by Djeserit

But, what happens is, the screen goes blank for a few seconds and shows an hourglass, then back to the desktop with the password box.

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Let me ask very specifically, when you say you type in your password, that's in the Launcher where it asks for your username and password. Then you see a brief loading message then you say "you are taken back to the desktop with the password box you mean you are returned to the launcher windo with the user name box and password box, and they're empty?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Djeserit

The reason I say it connects is that I tested it by logging in a world I haven't been on for months. When it booted me back to the password box, on the world list it said I had logged in 'today'.

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I would not have made that assumption, I would have assumed that the launcher thinks you logged in because its done its job, but that's not the same as evidence you actually connected to game servers.

You can reinstall DDO and it seems to work for at least one session, but subsequent days you can't play. After reinstlalling, were you able to completely quit the DDO software and relaunch it successfully? After you were unable to, I assume a full windows restart did not fix the problem?

This -feels- to me like a "something somewhere isn't getting saved" type of problem. perhaps a spot on your disk is corrupt (scandisk may find it) or perhaps your user account is corrupt? (Try installing to a new one with admin priveleges?) Perhaps something elsewhere is not being "saved" correctly? Since your original error was the "root element" error, did you try removing and reinstalling .Net 1.1 and the 1.1 hotfix?

I admit these are guesswork, but I'm going on "feel" here..if any of my assumtions is wrong then we're barking up the wrong tree.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by My2Cents

This -feels- to me like a "something somewhere isn't getting saved" type of problem. perhaps a spot on your disk is corrupt (scandisk may find it) or perhaps your user account is corrupt? (Try installing to a new one with admin priveleges?) Perhaps something elsewhere is not being "saved" correctly? Since your original error was the "root element" error, did you try removing and reinstalling .Net 1.1 and the 1.1 hotfix?

I admit these are guesswork, but I'm going on "feel" here..if any of my assumtions is wrong then we're barking up the wrong tree.

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It could also be something got borked with file permissions as well.