Not A Valid Win32 Application?

[dark_storm_87]

Hey all. A couple months ago I downloaded a trailor for BioShock and it got me pretty excited because I thought this looked like a very cool game.

Lo and behold a couple months go by and I notice Bioshock gets released so perhaps due to my excessive drinking last night, I decide on a whim to buy it and play it all day today to relieve my hangover.

I go to GameStop and by the regulare PC version and I get home excited to try it out, flush with the excitement and anticipation of playing a new video game for the first time.

I put it into my DVD-ROM drive and nothing happens. I open it up in My Computer (it does list BioShock as being in the drive and lists the contents of the disc) and procede to click on BSAutoRun.exe. A little error box pops up saying 'D:\BSAutoRun.exe is Not a Valid Win32 Application'. Now back in the days of Windows 98, I occasionally saw things like this, but never once in the past 3 years of being a computer science major have I seen this again so I am somewhat perturbed.

I click on every other .exe file on the disc and the same error pops. I open up the documentation file and read the ReadME file (yes it does let me open and perfectly view the .txt files on the disc) and that doesn't help me.

So I search the web, find out about the Activation limit and all this nasty SecurROM ☺☺☺☺ or whatever and that just pisses me off even further. What was supposed to be a day of leisure and relief from my hangover has now turned into a cluster☺☺☺☺ of somebody's stupidity (maybe mine, but like I said I had a hangover...its long gone now). However nowhere on the web is there help for my specific problem so can somebody please help me? Also I have already tried rebooting and disabling my antivirus to no avail. Oh and I have two DVD-ROM drives on my computer, one is about 2 years old and the other one is only a month or so and it gives me the same problem on both.

I am seriously considering saying ☺☺☺☺ BioShock, returning it and getting my money back and not buying anything except Halo3 and StarCraft II when they come out.

My system is:
Athlon 64 3200+
Win XP Professional SP2
2 GB DDR 400 RAM
nVidia GeForce 7900 GT

Thanks again.

[BTJustice]

I have the exact same problem. I stick the DVD into my DVD drive and nothing happens. I go to MY COMPUTER and double click the drive which shows BIOSHOCK without an icon for the DVD and I get the same error message. WTF?

[headkase]

Do you have any Anti-Virus installed? If you do not, you can get AVG free from:

Here.

You should not be getting this error with files straight off the DVD. Do you get the same error when trying to run the setup program from a different cd/dvd? If you do then it would most certainly be something in your Windows installation itself and I would look for a virus first.

If you do have Anti-Virus installed, it may be the culprit, try to disable it just for the Bioshock install.

[CherryIcee]

Could be that the disk itself is bad. Try copying all of the files from the DVD onto the harddrive. If you get any errors trying to do that list them. If it copies over fine, try installing from the files that were copied to the harddrive.

[BTJustice]

I have NOD32 for antivirus. I don't think the disc itself is bad at all.

I booted into SAFE MODE and the installer started fine after I double-clicked on the DVD drive with BIOSHOCK in it though it took about 1 HOUR to install the game. It then reached the point where it wanted to download the latest patch which it couldn't do in SAFE MODE. Setup terminated and the game was not installed. I was pretty disgusted at that point.

So I rebooted into SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING. I would get the exact same error message again about not being a valid Win32 application. The only differences between SAFE MODE and SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING are 2 svchost.exe processes. I assume those 2 extra svchost.exe processes allow networking in SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING.

At this point, it seems to me those 2 svchost.exe processes are what blocks BIOSHOCK from installing.

[BTJustice]

I brought the BIOSHOCK DVD to work and loaded it into the DVD drive of my work computer. The installer loaded just fine.

I don't think my DVD drive at home is bad as the installer loads in SAFE MODE and my other games work just fine in NORMAL mode. The DVD drives in both my work and home computer are exactly the same.

My work computer has Windows XP Pro with SP2. My home computer has Windows XP Media Center Edition with SP2. Windows XP Media Center Edition is Windows XP Pro with a few more bells and whistles added to it.

[BTJustice]

I think I have a solution.

I am just going to download the BIOSHOCK ISO that is not cracked so I can finally play the game.

This is the torrent I am getting right now which IS NOT CRACKED...

Please do not link to torrents or torrent sites.

[CherryIcee]

I understand that you were wanting to link just to an ISO of the game disk to possibly help members with installation/disk errors, but it's still not allowed. You have to keep in mind that the comments for that torrent DO mention cracks and give links to said cracks which is also against the forum rules.

[BTJustice]

It would be nice if 2K would let us that have disc problems (and everyone else that has the PC DVD since we all get Sony DRM / SecuROM) trade in our DVDs for improved ones. It is astounding software makers waste money on protection that is always crackable. All it hurts is us legit users who buy software.

[headkase]

BT: It is a fact that the only people copy-protection annoys are the people who actually bought the game - pirated versions do not have the copy-protection. With that said it is a corporate game: copy-protection is a box that must be checked before the product goes out the door. Some protection is acceptable e.g. checking for the disc but beyond that it is a game of decreasing returns. The disc check will stop 90% of little Johnies from installing it on their friends computers. An additional 100% investment in the protection will stop 5% more, 200% investment will stop an additional 2% and so on. And thats before a network enters the picture. Once someone has access to a network then it only takes *ONE* person to remove the protection and everyone who can find it automatically wins with the publisher losing. In a perfect world Bioshock would have come with just a standard CD-check not with missing files that throw into doubt whether it will even be possible to install and play it at a future date. Just the CD-check would have stopped the casual piracy without possibly harming customers at some future date when they go to install Bioshock for some retro gaming and find the download servers died years before. It's ironic that pirates versions may be what paying customers use ten years from now. With decreasing returns in mind it just makes sense to invest the minimum money with the most (per dollar) returns. 2K has failed that objective with Bioshock.

But that still doesn't mean you're not a twit if you pirate it.