Insane Installer of Insanity - Item Level 63

So, I managed to get Diablo III (thank you, Chris and Verushka!) as an early birthday present and I've been cleaving ass with a variety of weapons against the hellspawn for several weeks now. Despite many claiming the game to be a fail, I find it enjoyable. Maybe it's because I'm a newcomer to the series? I doubt it.

My copy of Diablo III

But, have you heard of my horror stories of installing the game? Blizzard decided to make the process of installing the game "A pain in the ass to many" according to myself, and as a result there are lots of people out there who couldn't install the game (there are some who probably still can't).

Gather around the fire, readers, and listen to my tale. Learn from my mistakes, and you will be rewarded - I think.

It began with me looking at the fold-out cover box thingy in awe, carefully removing the disc and putting it in my DVD drive. I was quite keen on checking out the installer, because Starcraft II had the best one I've ever seen. A box appeared on my screen, to my dismay, because this was not the awesome installer I was expecting. It said "Checking for updates" and there was a progress bar beneath it, which was taking forever to progress. I had a look at my bandwidth monitor and saw that the little program was using a lot of my bandwidth, so I thought it was downloading the game updates prior to the install. I thought this was acceptable. Seeing that the progress bar only moved a little bit in the space of an entire 15 minutes, I turned my monitor off and went to sleep believing that it would be done downloading by the time I wake up.

Forgive me, Bul-Kathos, because I was wrong.

I woke up (the next morning) and the first thing I did was turn on my monitor and move the mouse to check if it was done. To my horror, another box appeared. This is what it said:

Error code BLZPTS0000J. Failed to run a required program (Blizzard Setup). Wait one minute and try again and if that doesn't work please restart your computer and try again.

Wut. Wait one minute, you say? I waited the whole night! Why can't you run the Blizzard Setup? What is this error code BLZPTS0000J? Why am I naked? (I'm serious, I had clothes on the night before. It must be that evil faerie again). So I left my room, brushed my teeth (hygiene is important, yo), put some clothes on and returned. I fired up Firefox and googled this error code. According to the Battle.net support page it seems that I didn't have the correct privileges or administrator rights for the application. This makes no sense, because I have an administrator account. Nevertheless, I ran the executable as an administrator and tried again. The updater checked for updates, so I left to eat breakfast.

Yeah that's what I looked like

When I returned, I was greeted with the same error code and the same story about trying again in a minute. So I waited one minute and tried again.

The same thing happened.

At this point I was rather annoyed. Why? First of all, why would you lie to me by saying that waiting one minute can possibly solve a problem like this? Secondly, how hard can it be to check if an application is up to date and download the new one if its not? At that point I realised that perhaps its working fine, but my antivirus is blocking its write privileges as well as its internet connectivity. I opened up my antivirus and disabled the virus protection, as well as the firewall. With a sigh, I ran the executable with administrator settings yet again, watching the progress bar move painfully slow for roughly 15 minutes. At the back of my mind, I began to doubt that the antivirus solution I had installed was not the problem, and I was right - the updater eventually presented me with the same error code.

I was running out of options fast. I googled some more and browsed through many forums where people like me encountered the same problem and had asked the Diablo community for help, only to be inundated with replies such as "It worked for me" or "n00b". I eventually came across a few posts that suggested I delete the working folder for the updater and try again, because the updater may encounter the usual bug or a loss of internet connectivity and fail. The downloads are incremental, so if there was a problem downloading the first time, there would be more problems the second time and so on, thus making any more attempts redundant. Challenge accepted.

This fabled working folder was hidden in a place called C:\ProgramData\Battle.net on my computer, and the folder was hidden, so I had to enable hidden files and folders. I found it, and deleted it. Rinse and repeat. Waited for the updater to give me a response... and it finally happened.

Error code BLZPTS00002. Failed to run a required program (Blizzard Setup). Wait one minute and try again and if that doesn't work please restart your computer and try again.

At first, I wanted to kill myself, but then I had a closer look at the message. The error code changed! Finally, some progress! I googled this new error code, and the wise and mighty Battle.net support page told me that there was something wrong with my internet connection, or perhaps a 3rd party application may be interfering. We pay roughly R300 for our internet connection, and there's something wrong with it. Some more sleuthing hinted that I need to port forward for the updater to work. According to Blizzard, the following ports needed to be forwarded:

• 80 for HTTP
• 1119 for the game client, as well as patch version queries
• 6881 - 6999 for launcher, as well as downloads

So let's see here: two ports for playing the game and more than a hundred ports for launching and downloading? <sarcasm> That makes sense. </sarcasm>

I make my way into the forbidden lands of port forwarding in my router settings, only to find out that I don't know how to enter a range of ports instead of just one. Eventually I figured out that you can just separate the upper and lower bounds of ports with a hyphen (go figure). Hopeful thoughts are racing through my mind as I attempt to run the updater again (almost forgetting to run it as administrator). Needless to say, this is what I get in the end:

Error code BLZPTS0000J. Failed to run a required program (Blizzard Setup). Wait one minute and try again and if that doesn't work please restart your computer and try again.

I'm back to square one, folks. It's been almost two days, and the game is still broken even before it's installed. Like a man wandering through the Stinging Sands for days, dying of thirst and blood loss, I am becoming more and more desperate for any signs of salvation. I eventually give up, because I'm pretty much fed up and I've only a few hundred megabytes of my ADSL cap left due to the updater continuously doing Tyrael-knows-what, even though it’s not making any progress with the installation. Defeated and dreary, I close my workspace and launch Battlefield 3 to restore some of my vigour.

Then it hit me.

Finally some results

Earlier this year I had trouble getting Origin to download updates for Battlefield 3, and I eventually figured out a way to fix it (the post on how I managed to fix it can be found here). I wondered: perhaps I could apply some of the methods I used there, here? Maybe then it would install? Like Luke Skywalker leaping like a ballerina out of the rebel base shortly after being kissed by Leia*, I reboot my PC and boot Windows 7 into safe mode with networking. I run the updater as an administrator and the usual update checking box appears. To my amazement (and sheer joy) the progress bar moves swiftly to the end, bringing the first phase of the installer to fruition. It then begins to PROPERLY DOWNLOAD the installer updates! Invisible tears of joy stream down my cheeks as I excitedly watch the progress bar move. I constantly check the working directory too, noting how the size of the folder becomes bigger with each passing second. That means its working. It's downloading the installer.

So I'm there, watching the progress bar grow, getting ready to finally install the game, when it just stops. The progress bar shortens a bit, downloads, gets bigger, then shortens again. This happens a few times and eventually the window closes, reopens, and repeats the cycle. My victory was short lived, it seems. I navigate to the working directory and checked out the log to see the issue. According to the log, the updater failed to initialise the installer because it was in safe mode! Great. Now what? Perhaps if I boot back into Windows normally, it would work? I gave it a try and voila! It worked! It checked for updates in a few seconds, it updated the installer in a few seconds, and it launched the installer!

Damn I was so close

I finally had a good look at the Diablo III installer. It worked similarly to the Starcraft II installer i.e installing the game whilst presenting the game's lore in a tasteful manner. However, there was something odd. Now matter how long I left the installer to do its job, it remained at 0%. What's worse, is that it was using my bandwidth too!

Not again.

I ultimately reached the conclusion that there was some software suite conflicting with the install process. There is no clog in safe mode, but it lacks the software environment necessary to launch the installer. Normal Windows launches the installer, but encounters the clog. What I needed was a compromise: I needed some way to boot into Windows with only the Microsoft services, and not anything else. Administrative tools, anyone? System Configuration turned out to be my saviour. With this I could disable any programs or services and prevent them from loading when I start Windows. I clicked on the Services tab and disabled all of the services that are NOT created my Microsoft (I left my graphics card drivers enabled as well, so leave anything by NVidia or ATi). I also clicked on the Startup tab and did the same thing there. I rebooted, started the installer and voila! The installer worked!  It installed the game, it downloaded updates and applied them, it did its job!

I can finally play it

Now I needed all my software back, so I just re-enabled them in the System Configuration tool and rebooted. Now, whenever there is an update, I just disable the necessary programs, reboot, update the game, re-enable the disabled programs, reboot and I'm good to go! Achievement unlocked?

That was the longest install of my life. That is also the end of my painful story. That should net me at least a 1000XP right? So for now, if you would kindly excuse me, I have a few bosses that I need to farm.

THE END

* That was meant to be a joke. I know Leia and Luke are siblings. That was the point of the joke. Oh gosh. 


This post was edited by my dear Neliel-chan. Ichigo nyu nyu!