Spore Creepy and Cute and the 0x2ec02d4c.exe error, hardware incompatibility?
Hi people! So I'm having this weird issue where I'm unable to install Spore Creepy and Cute on my computer. I tried installing it throught EA App and throught the old DVDs I have. Either way its failing to load it in. I know that C&C has a long history of people failing to install it or load it in and etc, but I'm having an odd error that some people have already faced on the past but have resolved it in the most different ways possible. But none of their solutions resolved my case.
To be more specific I'm having this error on EA App: "Error: A redistributable package (0x2ec02d4c.exe) was not installed successfully. Setup cannot continue. (-1073741819)"
I searched this error over the internet and visited every single forum I could find talking about this error, and various solutions, solutions for the DVD, Steam and EA App versions. And everything I could find about it was about files that were placed on the wrong folder by the installer, files that are incomplete and the user had to transfer the C&C files from a "good" install of Spore to the bad one, people who had to first install core spore first, then open and close it, and then install C&C in order to it to work, people trying to mess up with windows registry and directx and Visual C++ redistributables and etc etc. Well, NONE of these fixes fixed my problem unfortunately.
As a last resort I tried a drastic solution, one that would 'confirm' my fear, I did a fresh windows install on my old gamming computer, and installed Spore with C&C throught EA App, and, of course, it installs and works flawlessly on my old computer. BUT, after I removed the hard drive from the old computer and putted on my new setup and booted windows from it, when I tried launching that same Spore that worked flawlessly on the old PC, the game, instead of launching, gave me a different error...
...It showed me the following: "Configuration Script Failed [2000]", but after showing me this error, I tried launching the game again, and the game launched (without showing the error again)! But it was once again with C&C missing from the creture creator!!!
By this point I'm almost 100% shure it's a hardware compatibility issue. And maybe this can only be fixed with a game update or maybe a modder/lover of this game, or community effort in the future will fix this. But I may be wrong and I'm hoping to be wrong bc, every other older or newer game I have and have tried so far on my new PC is working with no issues whatsoever. I'm only having issue with this game specifically and specifically with this body parts expansion pack as Spore and Galactic Adventures works perfectly on my new build.
But I practically gave up by now, and that's why I'm posting here hoping that one day someone will have a solution for this problem. As people upgrade their computers, I believe more and more people will face this same issue in the future.
My old PC has these specs:
- i7 4790k CPU
- Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 motherboard
- 32GB of RAM
- 2TB SSD
- Gigabyte GTX 1080 WINDFORCE OC GPU
- 750W PSU
My new and current PC build has these specs:
- i9 13900K CPU
- Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard
- 128GB of RAM
- 4TB SSD (2x2TB in raid 0)
- RTX 4090 FE
- 1300W PSU
PS: Yes, I tried MorrysIllusion fix from this topic: "https://answers.ea.com/t5/Spore/Creepy-amp-Cute-will-not-install-correctly-origin-disc-steam/td-p/9994080" and it didn't work. The fix appears to be for the Steam version of Spore, and mine is EA App version.
PSS: I will try two more things still, running a virtual machine on my pc and installing Spore inside of it to see if this fixes the issue or/and buying the Steam version of Spore as most people that had "error 0x2ec02d4c.exe" had it on Steam and their fixes are for the Steam version, but I'm not optimistic on this last solution for my case.
The Solution:
So, after reading several articles, forums and even my BIOS manual itself, I discovered the solution to the problem, and I only did it because I also play The Sims 3. When this error started to happen and I saw that The Sims 3 has problems running on a PC with the 12th generation of Intel processors onwards I asked myself, if Spore is from the same time and from the same developers, why doesn't it show the same error? As it turns out it does, but different...
If you have a very powerful Intel processor, with many cores, as is the case with Alder Lake onwards, 12th and 13th generation Intel processors at the time of writing this solution, the game will fail when specifically installing the Creepy and Cute parts and when running the game also with it installed. I believe that people with an Intel Xeon and other powerful ones with more cores will have this same problem and I believe that the fix for the problem will be at least similar in each case.
The funny thing is that you don't need to do or worry about any of this if you just install Spore, Galactic Adventures and Bot Parts, as they all install normally and work normally on new processors too. The problem is only with Creepy and Cute, specifically the package and script "0x2ec02d4c.exe" that it runs during installation, and that once installed, every time you start the game the script from that Parts Pack runs at the game startup, and if for any reason you raise the number of CPU cores on your computer, you will get another error, the "Configuration Script Failed [2000]" error, when trying to launch the game, which makes sense because it is as if the machine has been changed and the game does not recognize the new configuration, and repairing the game by EA App will give you the same old error, "Error: a redistributable package (0x2ec02d4c.exe) was not installed successfully. Setup cannot continue (-1073741819)".
So, let’s get back to it, the fix:
- I needed to read my BIOS documentation and discover where were the CPU configurations. You are going to need to temporarily lower your number of active cores in your CPU. Yes, your PC is too strong to even install an old game like Spore Creepy and Cute.
- In my Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard the configuration I needed to change was inside the Advanced tab à CPU Configuration, you go a bit down and find “Active Performance Cores” and “Active Efficient Cores”, they are going to be set to the default value “ALL”, you need to change these values. In my case I changed “Active Performance Cores” to 4 and “Active Efficient Cores” to 0. I saved and rebooted to Windows.
- Back on Windows you may now install Spore through any means you own or want to install the game (I have the DVD and EA App versions), remembering that first you should install Spore, then Creepy and Cute, and only then Galactic Adventures and finally Bot Parts if you so wish to. You are going to notice that the game now installed successfully, without the "0x2ec02d4c.exe" error.
- Now you may reboot back to BIOS and put the “Active Performance Cores” and “Active Efficient Cores” back to its default value, in my case “ALL”, and reboot back to windows. (EDIT: It turns out you don't need the Lazyduchess patch to run the game afterwards, so you may now stop here and just start playing the game! Either way I'm leaving steps 5 and 6 here, maybe it turns out useful to someone else one day).
- DON’T start the game just yet! Or else you gonna receive the error 2000 and have to repeat the entire installation process all over again. Now you gonna need the “Intel Alder Lake Patch By Lazyduchess” that you can find here: https://modthesims.info/d/667734/intel-alder-lake-patch.html
- Yes this patch was made for The Sims 3 and Medieval, but it works perfectly for this case of Spore too! After downloading and unzipping the file, you will have to run the "AlderLakePatch.exe" executable inside the unzipped file and patch the Spore executable located where you installed the game on your computer, in my case it was: "\EA Games\Spore\Sporebin\SporeApp.exe" because I use EA App and I don’t have Galactic Adventures installed. If you have Galactic Adventures installed you should also patch the “SporeApp.exe” executable inside its folder as well (\EA Games\SPORE Galactic Adventures\SporebinEP1\SporeApp.exe), or else you’re going to receive the same old error and have to repeat the entire installation process all over again.
- Now that the game executable/executables is/are patched, you may now start and play the game as usual!!
You’re welcomed! And rest assure that the problem is not with your RAID 0 SSD or your new super NVIDIA RTX 4090 or any of its G-SYNC, AA, PP, configurations as none of those have any incompatibility issues with Spore! The problem is with your new processor that has over 24 cores and 32 threads and the old C&C DLC doesn’t like that for some reason ;-;
