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What's messed up?

Joining or creating a game on a TA game services requires the the existence of certain DirectPlay Windows Registry entries under the key 
	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectPlay\Applications\Total Annihilation
These entries are usually created by the TA setup program. It might fail to finish this task succesfully though because you ran the setup under Windows user account lacking the appropriate access rights. The DirectPlay entries are located in that part of the registry which is shared between all Windows accounts - adding, updating or deleting stuff in this area of the registry requires to be loggged on with a Windows user account having Administrator privileges.
Generally if the TA DirectPlay registry key itself or some of its entries are missing or if the entries are screwed in some kind (for example by pointing to the wrong TA disk folder) you won't be able to join the battle room of a TA game hosted by someone else nor will you be able to create a new battle room by hosting a game yourself.

IMPORTANT

For successfully installing and running taregfix2 you need to be logged on with a Windows user acount having Administrator level privileges.

Installing the registry fix program

Download the installer for the TA DirectPlay registry tool which is taregfix2_setup.exe.

Launch taregfix2_setup.exe by double clicking on it in the Windows Explorer. A Windows command console window will open then in which the installer gets executed. If it's the first time you run the installer on a particular computer the installing process should end with the message shown in the screen shot below:

If the installer found an older version of taregfix2.exe on your computer it'll replace it with the newer version. In this case the program output would look like this:

Running the registry fix program

  1. Once the program is installed you can call it by going to the Start->Run menu:

    And typing taregfix2 in the field 'Open' and then and clicking on the 'ok' button:

    A window like in the screen shot below should appear on the desktop showing the process of the program. taregfix2 will search for your TA installation(s) on your hard drives automatically and will try to identify valid versions of the TA main program totala.exe.

  2. If everything went well the program output should look like this:

    What to do if you got stuck on a display like shown in the screen shot below:

    Well, basically the problem is caused by the fact that more than one totala.exe file was found. You need to tell taregfix2 which of the detected directories containing the TA main program to link into the registry. The Path and Version/MD5 column should give you a hint which directory to pick. If the listed directory contains an unknown version of the TA main program like shown at entry 2 . in the screen shot above then don't get confused by the strange looking (red marked) output in the Version/MD5 column of that row. It just displays the fingerprint value of the unknown version.
    taregfix2 will also stop autmatic processing in case only one directory is found which contains a TA main program that can't be identified.
    Now, to get unstuck all you have to do is to enter the number of the row of the entry that shall be linked into the registry. You have to finalize the number input by pressing the Enter key. You can check the explanation of interactive mode commands for more details if needed. After entering the number of the desired entry the success message should come up:

  3. The game service software should be able to launch TA from now on. You may also want to check the more detailed description of taregfix2.exe

Page last updated 2008/11/19 by tcbw@tcbw.net