Having trouble with crashes? Errors in destinations?

Okay - follow these SIMPLE rules, and most poeple will be fixed. This is NOT a help thread, we won't sort your problems out with finding things or anything else, that is for the maker of the mod to do, HOWEVER, there are an ALARMING AMOUNT who don't read the readme file for help, OR the mods don't supply it. To get you working quickly - here is the fixes in general*

1. Please make sure you are using Freelancer Mod Manager Version 1.2 Beta 9 as most mods need this version. It contains instructions that previuos versions do not, and also options and other things. You can find this HERE

Okay - now install that if you haven't already. Good stuff - you are about 3 steps away from working.


Next - your mod won't activate. Their is an error - something is missing.
This means that thier is a discrepancy between your files and the mods. This can be from a previous mod that didn't deactivate all the way to a space in a file (honest!). Their are two fixes to this problem:

1) Reinstall FL . I know - its gonna take 5 mins - is it worth it? Up to you - either play the mod or not . So, yep - go to your freelancer gameFolder and DELETE the freelancer folder (default is c:\program files\microsoft games\). Once done, insert the CD and have reinstall.

2) Use the Freelancer SDK (not official) which contains all the ini files pre-decompressed by Louva Deus. He has also fixed many basic errors in the files, and although there is no proof it makes the game run smoother or better, personally - I still believe it doesn't harm. this is also the "cheap" mans reinstall - as it gives you clean ini files without reinstalling .
You can download the SDK HERE

Once you download it, it uses an installer. Make sure its going to install to your Freelancer Folder. You need to make sure its path is your DATA folder, but by default its going to write to that anyway - see below picture for what i mean!


Obviuosly its going to install to data folder, so i don't need to select the data folder at all - otherwise it would make a folder called data inside the data folder! That would be stupid



Okay - so now you have a clean game. now activate the mod and it should work!



3. I CRASH WHEN LOADING.

Okay - this is the most COMMON complaint at the moment. Crashing when loading up - splash screen then desktop. Okay - to fix this problem you need to do a few things for us First - open FLMM and then go to the tools menu - here you will find the "Delete autosave" - click on that and delete it please .



Next - IN the same bit you will see the "Open Save games folder" - click on that as well. This opens up your save games (of which i have thousands here obviously - shows how often i do this) and then select them all and delete them



The MOVE save games DOESN'T always work! So try this. Then - follow above - install the SDK or reinstall again and give it another go.




Okay - other problems? Deactivation. IF ANY errors arise - then click on RESTORE backups in the tools part. It may automatically restore backups - but you can try this again. Personally - if something doesn't deactivate properly - i just reinstall the game again. Sometimes files aren't restored and it deletes them instead - this is when you have to reinstall - however, that will have been fixed in the first part

There we go - after that - have fun and enjoy. IF you crash whilst playing - try again. If you crash again, then please tell the modder. They cannot fix bugs without information though - so DO NOT BOTHER unless you are going to include:

Where you were (system)
Location? (at Fort Bush)
Action? (Launching or docking with tradelanes etc).

These are sooooo necessary. Also include if you were doing a mission, WHOM AGAINST??? there are thousands of reasons for crashes, but that info there narrows it down from looking through a few MILLION charactesr of text down to looking at a file containing only around 40 thousand instead. Trust me - some files have 60,000 lines in them, and a crash can be from something as small as a single spelling mistake - so as much info as possible is needed. Tell them your loadout, your ship, what you had for breakfast - EVERYTHING you can. If you crash on a base, were you launching, which room did you go to? what were you clicking on and other things - as this cuts it down from 8 files to just around 100 lines of text. See how helpful it is?

There we go folks - stick to this and you should be working