Leif, you can try looking around the Paradox Interactive forums for help with the full game, I guess the issues would be similar http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?354-EU3-Tech-Support

One of the threads mentions this problem but in regard to Intel integrated graphics and their inability to handle pixel shader 2.0, something your graphic card shouldn't have issues with.

Yeah I spent a good 3 hrs looking for a fix with no luck..

Not only that, to post on the forums for tech support I have to wait 5 days or register a game from Paradox.

Not a good mark in their favor if I can't demo the game or get help to demo the game. I sure as hell ain't interested in purchasing a game I may not be able to play.

All my specs are well above bare minimums and I've tried updating everything (graphics, directX, etc.) all the way down to .net framework and shutting off all background programs and restarting, all to no avail.

I don't get much more baffled than this. Nobody had issues like these?

I had an issue with installing EUIII on my computer. I got Divine Wind last June and my computer was actually too updated. I had to *downgrade* my directX in order to play it, but its worked like a charm since

Well, the forums are the only extra benefit paying customers have over pirates since the games themselves are devoid of all anti-piracy mechanisms. Anyway, is it the demo of the original EUIII or is it some of the addons? I don't even know whether the expansions have demo but the original EUIII is 5 years old so a downgrade might be useful as goldfinger suggested.

So I've been trying to play this, but ever since Saturday evening, it's been crashing. I keep getting a blue screen with "fatal exception" written on it, but as the computer post-shutdown proceeds to boot just fine (or sometimes needs Startup Repair), it's clearly not BSoD. what do?

I want somebody to (in the more up-to-date versions)
1. Play as Trebizond the day after Constantinople has fallen, or perhaps better yet start the day after the Despotate of the Morea has fallen. As the last direct descendant of the Roman Empire, it is your task to restore the Byzantine Empire (there is, believe it or not, a trigger for this), reconquer Rome and get busy rebuilding the glories of an empire that has been a shadow of itself for a millennium.
2. Play as the Ming the day after you are exiled to Formosa. It is your mission to take back the Mandate of Heavan from the Manchu hordes from your base in Taiwan. You have no core on your only province, so you better not loose that transport.
If anyone thinks they can achieve either of these tasks, I ask that they report back on their progress!

PE, from the top of my head, it could be bad drivers or installation (for that you want to verify your checksum, the 4-digit number on the main screen).

JECE, I actually modded myself in a Jewish Taiwan in Magna Mundi, the reasoning being that a high-ranked Jewish official from Henan conquered the island for the Emperor and once Hongxi ruptured all foreign contacts, proclaimed an independant Jewish state. I even conquered Judea then!

Yo, PE, how you rolling?

A tip for anyone who wants to try something different: It's possible to change religious group, but only if you are a OPM (one province minor), your only province has the wrong religion and you go bankrupt (take 5 loans and still go below 0).

I played a game where I did this as Hungary. I took a GH sunni province and made myself a safe buffer of vassals, lost wars to Bohemia on purpose so they would take most of my land and gave the rest to my vassals. The Sunni province and the capital province were last - land-locked and with no connection to the rest of your land, you can offer your capital in peace deals. I went bankrupt and became Hungarian Sunni. I relied on the vassals until the bankruptcy was over (10 years of almost no troop morale) and the reconquered my cores from Bohemia, picking off my vassals one by one, until I had a Hungarian Sunni powerhouse in eastern Europe.

The best part? I was still in the Empire, so after I'd vassalised enough electors, I managed to become Emperor! Which meant that I could just ASK nations in the HRE to convert to Islam :D And... Yes. I formed the nation HRE. As a Hungarian muslim.

Vaft that is awesome.

I should add if it wasn't obvious that historical accuracy is boring to me. If I want plausibility, I play MM. But the determinism of EU2 and HoI2 was horrible. EU3 is a playground and I love it for that.

Yeah, I can see why you may want historical accuracy in some games, but this isn't really one of them.

I stopped playing EU3 when I always ended up having the same result. I tried MM and found it pretty buggy and rather annoying - but you seem to like it?

Buggy and annoying are fine with me, but the latest releases of MM the mod have been very stable. Have you tried playing with the newer expansions YJ? They add a whole lot. Just the newest patch for Divine Wind improved the game significantly.

What is MM?

Magna Mundi, the most ambitious and popular mod for EU3 that aims to create historical plausibility, realism and a lot more content. It's currently being developed into a game of its own, based on the EU3 engine.

"I tried MM and found it pretty buggy and rather annoying"

I don't like you. Does vanilla EU3 have an event chain allowing you to repeat Savonarola's catholic rampage? Coz I like me some bonfire of vanities.

Oh, ulytau, missed your earlier post here. I'm still having issues. :/ I don't think it's drivers either...

PE, post your checksum (in the lower left corner when you start the game) including version number, and I can double check whether or not it was installed correctly.

BJLT, v5.1

@Vaft - the latest patch for Divine Wind, is that the one that added a whole new row of maps to choose from? Because I rather like all those new map-modes. Its nice to see the fort levels of all the provinces and the tech levels of everyone so easily

So, installation is good as well.

Yep, installation's good and patched to the latest version. Sorry PE, except for incorrect drivers like uly suggested, I have no idea.

Drivers could be messed up, I might have just failed at checking that. I dunno if this means much, but after the game crashed the last few times and I got the blue screen with "fatal exception error" on it, I'd be able to boot it up fine after a few minutes (sometimes using Startup Repair, sometimes not), but when I'd go to play it through Steam I'd be told that the game is unavailable, and when I check properties I go to verify cache integrity and find that there's a problem there. Game reinstalls and plays fine until the next crash.

BUT, and this is the part that's throwing me, the number of files that are missing/screwed/what have you decreases with each attempt. First time it had to redownload 41 files, next time 22, next time 13...

All Paradox games have a habit of crashing occasionally, but not usually that badly. What graphics card do you have, PE?

For the record, Leif has issues with the demo even though he has a rig similar to mine. When does the game crash, PE? Is it a random in-game CTD or only upon specific circumstances? The only known CTD cause in 5.1 is the Ming/Manchu faction issue. The drivers are worth checking anyway though.

Other than that, follow this and post the result here http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?354-EU3-Tech-Support

"Please run DXDIAG, Save All Info, and post dxdiag.txt here (first delete everything after the Sound Devices section so it will fit). Also post your EU3/settings.txt and EU3/logs/system.log files. Note that if you use Vista/Win7 and have installed the game in the suggested folder c:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis III\, the active versions of these last two files will have been redirected by Vista/Win7 to a non-system directory, like c:\Users\[name]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis III\, where [name] is your Vista/Win7 user name. You may have to search your C: drive for them."

OK Vaft, maybe I'll try it. I didn't bother with DW so I'd have to get that too.

Ulytau I wasn't saying nobody should like it, just reporting my experience (this was I beleive right before or after NA came out, so it was a vastly different experience).

It isn't a crash to desktop, though - the computer just completely turns up and on boot up displays the blue screen, then restarts itself (sending me to the prompt for startup repair).

I'll recheck drivers to start

I had problems originally with EU3 because, although my graphics card supposedly met the minimum requirements, it'd just crash and load things badly. EU3 was the reason I actually got a proper graphics card in the end.

goldfinger, sorry for not replying, yes, the latest patch is the one which added a ton of new map modes.