^^^^^ This solved the problem for me on a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 machine ^^^^^
There were 2x copies "dbghelp.dll" in my Zero Hour folder, nuking both fixed it.
God help anyone that uses EA chat help....
Here we are in December 2020 and EA still has not fixed this issue.
I looked at the debug log file generated by the game.
I have pasted some of it:
GetStringFromRegistry - looking in SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts\EA Games\Generals for key Language
Looking in data\Generals.str for string file
Looking in data\english\Generals.csf for compiled string file
replaced an AI for AmericaVehicleHumvee!
replaced an AI for CINE_AmericaVehicleHumvee!
Invalid Sound 'VoiceGarrison' in Object 'AmericaInfantryPilot'. (PilotVoiceGarrison?)
Invalid Sound 'VoiceAttack' in Object 'ChinaInfantryBlackLotus'. (BlackLotusVoiceAttack?)
replaced an AI for GLAVehicleQuadCannon!
replaced an AI for ChinaTankGattling!
Invalid Sound 'VoiceAttack' in Object 'ChinaVehicleSupplyTruck'. (SupplyTruckVoiceAttack?)
Invalid Sound 'VoiceAttack' in Object 'ChinaInfantryHacker'. (HackerVoiceAttack?)
Invalid Sound 'SoundMoveStart' in Object 'CINE_GLAInfantryAngryMobNexus'. (AngryMobMoveStart?)
Invalid Sound 'SoundMoveStartDamaged' in Object 'CINE_GLAInfantryAngryMobNexus'. (AngryMobMoveStart?)
replaced an AI for CINE_GLAVehicleQuadCannon!
Invalid Sound 'VoiceAttack' in Object 'CINE_ChinaInfantryBlackLotus'. (BlackLotusVoiceAttack?)
Invalid Sound 'VoiceGarrison' in Object 'CINE_AmericaInfantryPilot'. (PilotVoiceGarrison?)
ERROR - openKeyboard: Unable to acquire keyboard device
WW3D::Init hwnd = 000B195C
Attempting Set_Render_Device: name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (nvd3dum.dll:8.17.13.142), width: 1024, height: 768, windowed: 0
I have an AMD graphics card. Who at EA thought it would be a good idea to hard code this game to a old nvidia card!!!!!! What the (censored)
It also can't find my keyboard?? Why?
EA have you heard of the Federal Trade Commission? You're gonna!
@darthhawk13
The game is 17 years old.
What are you trying to achieve by threatening with FTC?
If the game does not work for you and you do not want to deal with trying to fix it yourself, then ask for the refund.
It is not the first time in the history where some old games need user to do some manual steps in order to get things working on newer hardware or OS.
What steps have you tried to get the game running? What is the error message you are getting? There is lack of information, only a snippet of some debug log and honestly I have no clue where you pulled that out from. When I had error about DX 8.1, then there was no debug.log output anywhere.
Confusion of DebugLogFileI.txt:
Are you talking about the DebugLogFileI.txt? Last modification to this file was 5th of September 2012, Most likely when they made "Origin" installable version of it and is artifact from the installation. I can see as well, that they were using Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 on test machine. At the start of that debug log file you see also something like:
Log D:\CNCInstallTests\InstallHierarchies\Generals and Zero Hour\CnCGeneralsDistributionFile\Command and Conquer Generals\DebugLogFileI.txt opened: Wed Sep 05 21:48:10 2012
*** Initing Memory Manager prior to main!
Create GeneralsMutex okay.
CRC message is 1095
================================================================================
Generals version 1.7.474 (Internal)
Build date: Sep 5 2012 17:54:06
Build location: AMCDONALD-XP1
Built by: amcdon
================================================================================
I doubt you installed your game in "D:\CNCInstallTests\InstallHierarchies\Generals and Zero Hour\CnCGeneralsDistributionFile\Command and Conquer Generals\" (I do not have it installed in such location) and are running XP as the machine name (AMCDONALD-XP1) references, you can see as well the time and date of the installation there. I am quite sure your log files has same entries as mine.
So in summary I doubt this log file is about your machine so cool your jets. 🙂
Error and the log files that are created recently
The files in the game directory that had some change (Perf.txt, Ping.txt, QMPerf.txt and StateChanged.txt) were all 0 kB and empty when the following error came up:
---------------------------
DirectX Error
---------------------------
Please make sure you have DirectX 8.1 or higher installed. Also verify that your video card meets the minimum requirements.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
Ok now let's get to what fixed it for me:
When I rename or delete the dbghelp.dll in my origin game installation folder ("G:\Origin Games\Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour\Command and Conquer Generals" and "G:\Origin Games\Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour\Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour" for me), the game starts. It seems like they left some debugging DLL behind that references to older DirectX and could probably clean it up, but that seems to be about it.
