Program Will Not Load - How to Fix
Board admins - Please consider stickying this fix
A rare but nasty problem crops up for all games using the ELicense system. Somehow the file which manages all of your subscriptions gets corrupted. When this happens you will not be able to play any game using ELicense. This could be quite traumatic if you own several, as I do - The Greydog Software line, OOTP Baseball, etc.
The Symptom - When you click to run your favorite ELicensed program, the hard disk accesses for a few seconds, and then stops. For instance you click Bowl Bound or TEW 2005, and the program simply does not appear. It is as if the computer is ignoring you.
Identifying the Problem - Go into your Windows XP Control Panel. You will see the ELicense Control folder sitting there. If you open it, and it is blank, somehow it has been corrupted. No ELicense games will work for you anymore. You can breathe a sigh of relief that your memory isn't hosed, and your PC does not require imminent replacement.
Don't Bother To... - Uninstall and Reinstall the games. It won't work. The Problem is with your ELicense internal files, hidden deep in your system. I found threads online where users complained to ELicense and were given tools to remove the ELicense program then reinstall it. These attempts were NOT successful in fixing the problem. Others went into the msconfig files to reset the LicCtrl Service, but this only helped one person. It failed for everyone else. Many people tried turning off their Firewalls and uninstalling their Virus Protection. Not a wise move, and it failed to fix the problem anyhow.
Fixes Which Work - I found one user on these boards who fixed the problem by reinstalling Windows XP. Whatever file had been corrupted was fixed by the reload. I didn't want to go this far quite yet. So I went back a few weeks and Restored My System to a Previous Point. This worked like a charm. My ELicense games loaded fine after restoring to a point where I remember my games were working. If other reliable fixes are found, they should be added to this thread.
I won't even hazard to guess what causes the problem to occur. Perhaps a virus or spyware could attack the ELicence files (this did not occur in my case). Or maybe a disk error causes the ELicense files to go corrupt. Who knows. Either way if this happens to you, you better know how to fix it or you will be pulling out your hair.
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