UOSA.exe Process - No Game Window

Hello, I was hoping to reach out to the community to see if any other users have experienced a similar issue. The UO & my hardware vendor support teams haven't been able to identify a solution.

When trying to launch the UO Enhanced Client on my machine, the UOAC.exe process is created and you can view it in task manager/process explorer, but the game window is never instantiated.

If you've had a similar experience I would greatly appreciate your feedback.

The experience is similar to this post from reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ultimaonline/comments/7zk6u3/enhanced_client_wont_start/?st=jufrtwrh&sh=4466fdfa

Thank you,

Bombur - Sonoma

Which operating system Win 7, Win 8, Win 10?
32 bit or 64 bit operation system?
Have you tried alt-tabing to see if the window comes up?
Have you uninstalled and reinstalled the client from scratch?
Have you looked at the file's compatibility properties to see if any of them have been set?
Have you tried running Microsoft's DirectX's diagnostic tool: dxdiag?

Hi TimSt,

I appreciate the reply. I've gone through several dozen iterations of suggested troubleshooting steps with Broadsword, NVidia, and MSI. Rather than providing information for trouble shooting steps, I was hoping to hear from users who have already experienced the same issue and found a resolution.

That being, I will paste some basic system information in hopes someone may have some information pertaining to a valuable resolution.
Documents Directory:
C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\EA Games\Ultima Online Stygian Abyss

Thank you!

Bombur

Just trying to narrow down the behavior to see if it similar to another issue I've seen.

Does the app appear on the task bar?  Or is it only showing up in the task manager?
When the other people were helping you did they have you change the resolution of your monitor to see if the game's window was so far off screen as to make it appear as not showing up at all?

Have you tried running it in Admin mode?

Only two threads appear, the Main Thread, and another associated with InputHost.dll; Spy++ shows no window handles, no child processes, no parent processes.

Process explorer corroborates a two TID running at high integrity with no associated Window Title.

The working machines we tested with show around 30 associated threads; and will always have a Window Title, something along the lines of 'Ultima Online Sygiant Abyss %datetime%'.

Wow. They had you use Spy++.  That is taking the investigation strongly.

Did they have you run the windows system file checker to see if there was a problem with your windows installation?

Did they have you uninstall and reinstall DirectX to see if it's diagnostic tool missed something? I've had that happen.

After that point I would use a debugger like WinDBG or Visual Studio to debug the issue.

Bombur said:

Hi TimSt,

I appreciate the reply. I've gone through several dozen iterations of suggested troubleshooting steps with Broadsword, NVidia, and MSI. Rather than providing information for trouble shooting steps, I was hoping to hear from users who have already experienced the same issue and found a resolution.

That being, I will paste some basic system information in hopes someone may have some information pertaining to a valuable resolution.

------------------

System Information

------------------

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 18362) (18362.19h1_release.190318-1202)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd

System Model: MS-7A95

BIOS: 1.20 (type: UEFI)

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-7980XE CPU @ 2.60GHz (36 CPUs), ~2.6GHz

Memory: 131072MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 130750MB RAM

DirectX Version: DirectX 12

---------------

Display Devices

---------------

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Installation Directory:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\Ultima Online Enhanced

Documents Directory:
C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\EA Games\Ultima Online Stygian Abyss

Thank you!

Bombur

Bombur said:

Hello, I was hoping to reach out to the community to see if any other users have experienced a similar issue. The UO & my hardware vendor support teams haven't been able to identify a solution.

When trying to launch the UO Enhanced Client on my machine, the UOAC.exe process is created and you can view it in task manager/process explorer, but the game window is never instantiated.

If you've had a similar experience I would greatly appreciate your feedback.

The experience is similar to this post from reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ultimaonline/comments/7zk6u3/enhanced_client_wont_start/?st=jufrtwrh&sh=4466fdfa

Thank you,

Bombur - Sonoma

Thank you for the responses, I really appreciate the consideration.

DISM and System File Checker tools return a clean bill of health; reformatting was also unsuccessful. 

The mother board model is MS-7A95, it is an ATX board. 

Unfortunately renaming the data folder has proven unsuccessful.

Attaching  to a debugger is a good suggestion,  admittedly, I generally cannot gleen anything from disassembly; decompiling would likely be a great route, but disassemble and decompile are both prohibited by the EULA.

Not sure if this is the case or not with the Ultima Online Enhanced Client executable, just saying that I recall something like that sometimes to get mentioned when older software is wanted to be run on newer, much faster machines (I see that your rig also has a RTX 2080 Ti....).

When I was customizing code for e-commerce, I found this to be the case with an old package (MerchantSpace) as opposed to the new package (ElasticPath), particularly with memory alloction and dumps. When I tinkered with game programming in Java, I also noticed differences with older versions of software on varying hardware configs.

When I ran VM and set up a "dumber" instance of Windows, I got the software to run well. Forgetting that I was in the VM, I loaded UO and realized it ran better there than on the rig's root config. I think has to do with how memory is dumped (memory leaks) in the code vs how memory is handled overall in a newer OS.

Since then, I keep a frankenstein rig to compare UO instances with the latest gaming rig I own (I prefer Alienware with custom graphics cards for playing Diablo and ESO). I also play games that will NOT play on newer hardware (Populous specifically, Black & White is another title, as well as Spore). I've found the older rig performs better with UO (EC, and especially CC). Note, I do not regularly play EC, but find that sometimes I have to.

Currently, I run UO's CC and EC on a hardwired (meaning no RAM or graphics upgrades are possible - you know, those $200 Walmart specials LOL!) netbook with the game itself sitting on an external tera-drive. It makes no sense to set up my regular rig as I'm traveling a lot lately. Yes, even the EC runs (altho have to lower graphic capabilities in the settings). 

Try setting up one of your older rigs (you know your stuff, so I assume you have some older equipment) and run some benchmark tests when running various things - I think you may find interesting results.

I"ve had this issue one time and it was more than likely due to too many instances of the EC running. A reboot fixed it and it hasn't happened since.