Known issues and solutions - FAQ

[Bardi Golriz]

Im not the most switched on when it comes to doing technical stuff so is a dumbass capable of following those instructions before i start?

What I dont understand is why the problem started anyway.... Sorry to be a pain Bardi

Unfortunately, I'm unable to enlighten you on that matter.

I think the instructions are thorough enough for you to be able to perform them without any problems

[Bardi Golriz]

can someone please tell me how to fix my problem with data editor for fm2009.

'The application has failed to start because it's side-by-side configuration is incorrect. please see the application event log for more detail.'

i dont even know what an 'application event log' is

please help, thanks

May I refer you to the files whose download/install should fix your issue - http://community.sigames.com/showpos...24&postcount=4.

[Harrison17]

Hey can ANY1 help?i brought fm09 and wen i type in my code it says activation failed with error:-1.please make sure you use the correct key and try again.I realli dnt know what 2 do

[ahmufcwafc]

Hey can ANY1 help?i brought fm09 and wen i type in my code it says activation failed with error:-1.please make sure you use the correct key and try again.I realli dnt know what 2 do

http://community.sigames.com/showpos...12&postcount=1

[Harrison17]

Hey can u help?i brought fm09 and wen i type in my code it says activation failed with error:-1.please make sure you use the correct key and try again.i keep tryin but still comes up with that .

[Veron]

Its fine if its written like that. Just enter the reset preferences bit & it should be fine.

Once you start the game and saved the game after the reset preferences and delete the left as was written before?

[schoey123]

Please help me. Ive looked through page after page but I cant find an answer.

My mouse flickers when playing the game and disappears on the screen when not being used.

How can I fix this ?

I have 2D/3D AGP grphics card.

[dj-baker]

help needed ive installed the game and registerd the serial code

the game starts up and gets to a screen with a L in the bottom right flashing and stays like that for around 5 minutes then i get the windows error messgae saying due to an unexpected error the game has to close....send error report / dont send error report and this is all it keeps doing

any ideas?

[Veron]

I have this problem start a new game time to choose the championships and do whatever the game goes to crush dumps ... What can I do? Can you help? Thanks a lot .....

[atleti_fan]

For the last 2 days, I have been getting this message right after the 'Let's kick racism out of football' screen:
"Football Manager 2009 is running dangerously low on memory. Please quit and free up some memory."

So now I can't play the game. I'd like to know what I should do about that.
Thanks in advance.

[daveyhopdot]

football manager has stopped working, after having a load of problems initially with parsing errors,game freezing etc. I went to launch game this morning and at first nothing happened but now it try's to start screen goes white and I get a message from windows saying football manager stopped working windows will look for a solution to the problem then a message comes up saying 'a problem caused football manager to stop working windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available'

[Ninja Badger]

Can anyone help? I'm about to smash this CD to pieces unless I can get this game to work.

I won't bore you with all the history but suffice to say I've tried loads of the suggestions in these threads to get my game working, without any luck. I've been directed to use fix below to get my problem sorted

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=65715.

However when I get to step 5 of the suggested solution I get the following error.

"Unhandled exception has occurred in your application. If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click quit, the application will close immediately
An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B)

Somehwere I read that this is because the fix isn't for x64 versions of vista.

Can anyone help me as I'm gutted that I can't play my game.

[Harrison17]

hey i went on 2 the link u suggested and went through it step by step but it didnt wrk it came up with error -703, can u suggest anything else?

[kikka]

I am getting Error code: -1073741811. The game was working perfectly well ...but I haven't used it for maybe 2 months . Now, when I come back ...I get this ... this STEAM thing is absolutely the worst thing FM have ever done . I will seriously consider whteher I will ever buy future versions of this game .

How can I resolve this ridiculous problem ... why can't I just run it from the disc as I always have before ...downloading updates as and when I choose too ?????

Having been surprised to have been asked yet again for my Activation Code. Having then checked it on the SI site and then downloaded the 'problem solving' zip file ..I find I am STILL unable to run this game ...as I had done, without problems, after again following ludicrously complicated and singularly inefficient processes at the outset.

Dreadful !

[drbiffgood]

i have issues and i need help from an SI tech

my issue is explained in this thread:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=101641

[fenric1973]

All of these problems to get a game WE BOUGHT to work on our machines... makes a good case for piracy doesn't it!?!
How many long term FMers are being turned away by buggy games that, after two patches still aren't playing right (and having experienced repeated problems occuring with EVERY release only becoming properly playable by around March, not bad for a game bought in october/ november)
And then are smacked in the face with hurdles of technical problems far beyond casual users who just want to put the game they PAID for into the machines they OWN and use it.

In any other walk of life you would be out of buisness... imagine buying a car that you can't get into just in case someone might have stolen it from the garage forecourt. And then having to wait for the passenger seat to be installed some 6 months after buying it. How long would that company last???
Or a supermarket that allows you to pay for your eggs but then puts a lock on them that you may or may not be able to get into depending on your level of technical expertise or LUCK?

This release is the straw that broke the camels back.
until SI release games that install with no problems and don't expect PURCHASERS to do bug testing for 6 months (and since CM4 i have had, i think 1 case of a smooth install) i can't imagine coming back to FM again.

How about this SI, take a break for a year, no release for 2010. Get 2011 working soundly, test it properly. Stop taking money for products that a lot of people can't use and then can't get rid of. Maybe then FM will be worth all the hassle, because although these forums are a great help i have had enough of checking here, there and everywhere just to get a game i OWN to run with stability or even at all. cos with '09 it has not been worth it.

Any other management games worthy of a look out there?

[dmayne07]

i have just bought a laptop as my computer broke which had fm 2009 on it but now when i try to play and activate it i get the cannot connect to the internet.

i have tried downloading all the launchers but they dont work and when i try the following i have to enter a password on the softanchor site and i try the trial version but it never works:

Fix:
1) Open IE and go to: https://fm2009.sa01.softanchorinsight.com

2) Here if you are using IE7 it will prompt you – “There is a problem with this website’s security certificate.”

3) Next, Click – “Continue to this website (not recommended)”. However – this is okay, it is safe.

4) Look up top at your IE address bar – you will see “Certificate Error”. Click this box, then click “View Certificates”.

5) Press, “Install Certificate…”

6) Select the “Place all certificates in the following store”.

7) Press “Browse”

8) Select “Trusted Root Certificate Authorities”. Not this will install the Go Daddy (a reputable) certificate into your trusted root certificate authorities if it is not there.

9) Press OK

10) Press Next

11) Press Finish

Close IE, then Reopen it and to go to https://fm2009.sa01.softanchorinsight.com. Note: on this visit, you will be allowed without trouble.


From here –

1) Reopen your FM2009 game
2) Enter your key into the Activation Dialog
3) Select the “Online” activation
4) Press Next

You game should activate immediately.

any suggestions

[qotsfan4eva]

on response to my recent xml problems i have now deleted all my previous saved games through the "my computer" link etc...

But now i cannot start a new game at all. The new xml error says the same but refers to an error of the "profile0" ...any solutions?

[jod123]

on response to my recent xml problems i have now deleted all my previous saved games through the "my computer" link etc...

But now i cannot start a new game at all. The new xml error says the same but refers to an error of the "profile0" ...any solutions?

I don't think deleting your saved games was the solution. Have you tried all the xml fixes in this thread? As in deleting your cache files and/or using the reset preferences tag on the target of the shortcut?

[atleti_fan]

For the last 2 days, I have been getting this message right after the 'Let's kick racism out of football' screen:
"Football Manager 2009 is running dangerously low on memory. Please quit and free up some memory."

So now I can't play the game. I'd like to know what I should do about that.
Thanks in advance.

So, can't anyone from SI help me? This is really starting to annoy me!

[jod123]

How much memory have you atleti_fan?

[atleti_fan]

How much memory have you atleti_fan?

2 gb, but you know, that's not the problem, because it was working fine since November, and then, out of nowhere, I can't play. Really frustrating!

[daveyhopdot]

football manager has stopped working, after having a load of problems initially with parsing errors,game freezing etc. I went to launch game this morning and at first nothing happened but now it try's to start screen goes white and I get a message from windows saying football manager stopped working windows will look for a solution to the problem then a message comes up saying 'a problem caused football manager to stop working windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available'
does anybody from si reply to problems on here anymore game worked for 2 months now I'm having problems, where is the help?,game has started playing up the last 3 days, managed to get game to start but now when I go to play a match screen goes white I get the annoying little blue circle that windows does when loading and the above message from windows appears.

[daveyhopdot]

anyone from sports interactive care to help first posted 2 days ago still waiting for reply

[daveyhopdot]

have 1000 gb hard drive, quad core processor, os vista, tried defrag hard drive, contacted steam which is a waste of time and still waiting

[daveyhopdot]

a word of advice to si in business the customer is king!

[CaptainPlanet]

Have you phoned the customer service helpline in the manual?

[little fella 7]

I finally plucked up the courage to purchase FM '09 after hearing about the trouble people have had just trying to get activated. I wish I hadn't bothered because I can't even begin installing it. A box pops up saying...

Installer User Interface Mode Not Supplied
Unable to load and prepare the installer in GUI mode

Any ideas please? I'm on my 15th season on FM '07 and i'm bored of it now!

[jod123]

Tried updating your Java, directx, graphics drivers and so on?

[little fella 7]

Tried updating your Java, directx, graphics drivers and so on?

Cheers for answering.

I've updated Java, directx and the microsoft.net thingy. Not entirely sure how to update my graphics drivers though. Help!!! ha

[jod123]

How to Update your Graphics Drivers

This depends on your graphics drivers.

Some Computer manufacturers insist you download drivers from their own sites. Please refer to the website of your computer manufacturer before reporting issues with graphics drivers.

Here are the websites of the largest graphics cards and chipset manufacturers:

Nvidia (Gforce/Legacy)
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk

ATI (Radeon)
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Intel (Onboard Chipsets)
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/

There are other manufacturers of graphics card drivers. If you can not find drivers for these cards they may have been discontinued. Please ask in this case as we may still be able to help.

Hopefully that helps.

[little fella 7]

How to Update your Graphics Drivers

This depends on your graphics drivers.

Some Computer manufacturers insist you download drivers from their own sites. Please refer to the website of your computer manufacturer before reporting issues with graphics drivers.

Here are the websites of the largest graphics cards and chipset manufacturers:

Nvidia (Gforce/Legacy)
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk

ATI (Radeon)
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Intel (Onboard Chipsets)
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/

There are other manufacturers of graphics card drivers. If you can not find drivers for these cards they may have been discontinued. Please ask in this case as we may still be able to help.

Hopefully that helps.

Fantastic. Cheers my friend. I have the Intel card (the minimum requirement one) so I shall try and sort it after football. I may ask more questions then (after 7ish)... Cheers again.

[jod123]

No problem.

[little fella 7]

No problem.

Hello again. No luck at the mo. I'm still getting the same box popping up. I have the latest drivers for my chipset. Do you have any other suggestions?

[jod123]

At what stage exactly does the box pop up?

[little fella 7]

At what stage exactly does the box pop up?

I put the disc in and a box pops up saying InstallAnywhere is preparing to install and once it reaches 100% the other box pops up saying it won't install...

[jod123]

Try this:

My computer will not read my DVD disc

You can download the game in Steam without using the disc using the game code you have from your purchased game.

Download Steam from here - http://store.steampowered.com/about/
Install Steam on your computer
Once installed, open up Steam
Go to My Games
Go to Activate a product on Steam
Enter your Activation Code found on the back of the manual. (Use http://keylookup.fm2009.softanchorinsight.com/ to see you got all the 0's and o's right)
Steam should now download your game.

[little fella 7]

Fingers crossed it seems to be installing...

You are an absolute star. I thank you

[jod123]

No problem. Hopefully with works now.

[David Villa]

Hi everybody.

I have a problem when running FM 2009, more concretely when it comes to play a match. Once I send my lineup and a general message to the team (i.e. relax and enjoy the game), I click the next button in order to go to the match. The problem is that at this stage my computer gets frozen with the following message: "simulating the game". I can even hear the atmosphere sound in the stadium or the referee's whistles but after 5 or even 10 minutes the screen does not change and the same message appears on screen.

Any ideas on how to fix this problem?

I run the game on a black macbook 2ghz intel core 2 duo with 2Gb RAM.

Many thanks in advance for your help,

cheers.

David Villa.

[Al Brown]

Cam someone PLEASE take a look at the thread I have started titled "crashes when loading" ? Its on the General discussion area & as you will see, I have tried several things to get my game working again. Its a problem with a Parsing error which despite trying several things, including uninstalling my disc version & downloading the game from Steam, I am STILL having the same problem. I have bought every FM since 2005 & have never had this kind of problem. Worse still, I cant seem to get it fixed. I can only think that there must be SOMETHING that I should have deleted when I uninstalled the disc version? Do you think that I should delete the 9.02 patch as well? Would this help?

[jod123]

David Villa, have you tried playing in windowed mode?

Al Brown, the patch does not matter. Delete the cache files like I said in your thread.

[David Villa]

David Villa, have you tried playing in windowed mode?

Al Brown, the patch does not matter. Delete the cache files like I said in your thread.

Hi, what do u mean by windowed mode? u mean running it on windows? i have windows xp on my mac with VMware fusion.

Cheers

[jod123]

Hi, what do u mean by windowed mode? u mean running it on windows? i have windows xp on my mac with VMware fusion.

Cheers

Windowed mode is running the game not in full screen so you can see the taskbar and start button at the bottom and title bar at the top.

It seems to reduce and to a degree stop the amount of crashes that happen in full screen mode.

To enable windowed mode, go to display and sound preferences and for display choose windowed mode.

Let me know if you have any problems doing that.

[mmfaria]

Where's the url wuere you can find how many activations you have left? It was in a sticky somewhere, but I can't find it...

I know you can have 5 simultaneous activation and I wanted to know many I have (not sure if it's installed in 3 or 4 pcs...)

Thanks.

[David Villa]

Windowed mode is running the game not in full screen so you can see the taskbar and start button at the bottom and title bar at the top.

It seems to reduce and to a degree stop the amount of crashes that happen in full screen mode.

To enable windowed mode, go to display and sound preferences and for display choose windowed mode.

Let me know if you have any problems doing that.

I have tried this with same result...frozen computer. The "error message" I get (it isn't a proper one but just the last this it appears before getting frozen) is match window, setting up match, please wait... I have waited for around 10 min as maximum and guess it would be absurd to wait more..

thanks for ur help.

D. Villa

[jod123]

David Villa, you got the patch?

[David Villa]

David Villa, you got the patch?

Nope, where can I get that? I guess those patches are supposed to fix bugs like this, aren't they?

cheers

[moony50]

Played the game a few days ago and the match day sound was fine, played yesterday and the sound has completely gone.

When i go on preferences before the match the 'play sounds' box is ticked but during the match it is unticked. When i try to tick it the game crashes.

Sound card drive and direct x are up to date btw. Latest patch installed as well.

Any advice?

[tottenhamfmo7]

FM was been working fine for me recently, got the game boxed and patched up.

Tried to run it just now and it asks for my activation code, so I type it in and it says;

'It would appear what you have attempted to enter is not a valid unlock key. To purchase an unlock key, please visit: www.sigames.com'

This is the same one I used when I first activated it online, and I used the key code converter thing both times..

HELP!!

[jod123]

Nope, where can I get that? I guess those patches are supposed to fix bugs like this, aren't they?

cheers

At the top of the screen you should see links to them. You want the 9.2.0 one as that is the latest.

[BobMUFC08]

This doesnt belong here but i didnt want to start a new thread and im sure someone can answer my question here.
What year does the game go up to? I've seen people on around year 2030, i myself havent been past 2018 and im just wondering is there ever a point where you cant go any further?

[jod123]

The game is infinite.

[fryson.ar]

Hello. I've been playing online with some friends, we are now on august 29, 2010 but we decided to stop playing because of the crashes. My crash dump directory if full of reports :S

We play the argentinian premier and secondary leagues (not moving the tv games). Its really weird that the game usually crashes when we are playing for the first time in that day the premier league matches, i think it has never crashed when the secondary league or cups matches are been played. After we get a crash dump i restart the game and we play for 3 or 4 hours with no crashes. Next day we decide to play, same thing happeneds.

Its driving us crazy. I have reinstalled the game and even tested the saved game in another computer, but it also crashed. What can we do?

[jod123]

Have you patched the game?

[fryson.ar]

Hey, thanks for answerig so quickly to my replay. Yes, 9.2.0. And i havent touch the database at all. Please, we love FM, i bought the game the very first day, i dont wanna thinks its a wast of money. We want to keep playing our online league :S

[jod123]

Have you tried playing the game in windowed mode?

[fryson.ar]

Have you tried playing the game in windowed mode?

Yes, i play in windowed mode. I also know 3D engine is not a problem because yesterday the game crashed when i had already finished my match and i was checking the league table screen waiting for my friends to finish their matches

[jod123]

The problem does sound odd. Do other save games behave like this?

[fryson.ar]

yes. Its really odd. Look, before the firts division matches starts on sundays i save the game, we start the matches, sometimes right away it crashes, sometime when we are finishing the matches, but then a open my fm again, i load that saved game, they connect again and we play crash free for some hours. I've try in my laptop so i can say is not my computer, we have played without some of my friends and it also crashed, so i dont think the problem is anyone of them. But im not sure. Can my crash reports be usefull to solve the problem?

[jod123]

They could be. It is best getting on to one of the SI testing team or someone else from SI. They might be able to figure out what is going wrong.

[fryson.ar]

Sometimes game crashes more than once a day.

[fryson.ar]

Ok, im now uploading them to the ftp. What am i supposed to do now?

[jod123]

Post it in the bugs forum giving an explanation of your problem explaining that you have upload the crash dump files. Make sure you tell them the names of them as well so they can find them.

[fryson.ar]

jod, when the game crashes firts it says "Array out of Bounds", then it crashes and a window appears telling me a report have benn generated. Ive try not using any skin or graphics, but i didnt have luck :S

[fryson.ar]

I maked a pack and uploaded as "last 10 crush dumps in my online argentinian league - fryson@hotmail.com.rar". Please i hope they read all this post and take care of my problem. Im tired and i cant find the correct place to post it :S

[David Villa]

At the top of the screen you should see links to them. You want the 9.2.0 one as that is the latest.

I downloaded and installed 9.2.0 patch for Mac but no success when clicking into play match...same window appears, setting up match. The only thing that has changed is that now it does not appear please wait...not a big improvement as you can see.

Is this something frequent in Macs? I have some other friends who run it with the same computer as me and the find no problems at all.

What could I do now?

Thanks

[jod123]

David Villa, does this happen for all saves?

Fryson.ar, I really have no idea so hopefully somebody from SI will be able to solve it. Have you posted in the bugs forum?

[mufcjoe]

Still using FM 2008 btw

Get this message when i click on the icon on my desktop.

No disc inserted.
Please insert the original "Football Manager 2008 SKU01 - UK English" CD/DVD.
Please have a look at http://www.securom.com/message.asp?m=nodisc for further, more detailed information.

When I try what it tells me to do on that site, I get the message "dla" is not recognised as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Nothing on that website helped, unfortunately. Anyone know what the problem is?

[Wheeler CPFC]

Hi,
Can anyone give me any help at all in trying to get FM 09 started?
I put in my product key and it starts intiliazing up then up comes with
'fm.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close'. We are sorry for the inconvenience.'
Anyone got a clue?
Thanks

[jod123]

Have you patched the game?

[Wheeler CPFC]

How do i patch the game jod123?

[jod123]

You see the links at the top of the page? Click the 9.2.0 one depending on whether you want mac/pc or wwsm/fm and download it. Then just double click on it to install it.

[Wheeler CPFC]

Cheers.
But how do you know whether you want mad/pc or wwsm/fm?

[jod123]

Have you Windows or Mac?

Have you bought Worldwide Soccer Manager or Football Manager?

[Wheeler CPFC]

Windows and Football Manager 2009

[jod123]

Then you want PC and FM.

[Wheeler CPFC]

Thanks
Downloading patch atm,does it automatically work straight away from downloading or do i have to do anything?

[jod123]

After you have downloaded it all you have to do is double click it and then click update. That is all.

Let me know if you have any problems.

[Wheeler CPFC]

yeah i will.
Thanks for all your help(Y)

[jod123]

No problem

[Wheeler CPFC]

jod123 it still comes up with the error message.
Do i need to reset my computer after the download?

[jod123]

Have you the latest directx, .NET Framework, graphics drivers and so on?

[Wheeler CPFC]

I dont think so beacause only had my computer wiped of it files few months ago or wouldnt that make a difference?
If so could i have the download links for these please?

[jod123]

I dont think so beacause only had my computer wiped of it files few months ago or wouldnt that make a difference?
If so could i have the download links for these please?

Have a look at this thread. It should have everything you need. If you need any help just post back.

[Wheeler CPFC]

Whenever i go to download from microsoft all the time it just says 'Cannot find server' which is stopping me download the directx and net framework.
Also how do you know you already have'nt got these already on your computer?

[jod123]

I have no idea why you ae getting cannot find server. What web browser you using?

You can find out the directx by checking your dxdiag. Instuctions are in the link I provided above.

To find out you have the .NET Framework, check your what you have in your add/remove programs facility in the control panel.

[Wheeler CPFC]

i have the framework 2.0 and have saved all the direct dx files where i would remember like it says on that link you gave me but still dont think i have the right graphic drivers and still comes up with the same message i have had all night.

[jod123]

You dont have the 3.5 .NET Framework so try downloading that. Also make sure you try as many things as possible in that thread I linked and also in this one. I am sorry I cannot help more but I am just too tired. I don't know about where you are but it is 3am here so I need sleep. I will probably have a look sometime tomorrow to see how you got on.

[Wheeler CPFC]

thanks for your help.

[yank07live]

can any1 help???ive never had any problems playing fm09 untill friday the 13th!!!
went to load up via steam as i usually do, however i got a message saying that the si activator had stopped working...then it asked to stop the program...it then brought up the product key program...i then put my key in and the program stopped working again

ive tried :
re installing via steam and internet
tried using the shortcut and it always does the same thing

[Wheeler CPFC]

yeah exact samethings happening to me now as yank07live.

[jod123]

Have you done a clean reinstall Wheeler?

[Wheeler CPFC]

What should i uninstall the game and reinstall it again then?

[jod123]

Yeah uninstall the game but also have a look at yank07live's thread and make sure you follow what I said in there.

[Wheeler CPFC]

May i have a link to his thread please?

[jod123]

http://www.community.sigames.com/sho...37#post2707537

[Wheeler CPFC]

Cheers.
hopefully should work now

[jod123]

Ignore that as you have Windows.

[Wheeler CPFC]

Yeah lol i relised that once i wrote it.