Game minimizes to taskbar instead of opening in a window

DogPal

New Member
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Hi Everyone!
I play lots of games on my laptop, but a game I used to play daily started acting goofy about 2 weeks ago & even the tech support people at Wild Tangent are baffled. I hope someone here knows how to fix this, as I'm going nuts without my favorite game to play!
I'll try to provide as many details related to this as I can, so here goes:
My laptop runs Windows 8 & Flash is up-to-date, (I thought I should get that out of the way) ;)
I use the game console for Wild Tangent & all the games work fine, except for "Pioneer Lands". I played it daily for months & I never had any problems.
I played "Pioneer Lands" on 8/30/14 for a few hours, then closed it at bedtime, as usual. On 8/31/14 I opened the Game Console, selected it & clicked 'play', but instead of opening in its own window it minimized to my taskbar. I could hear the normal sounds of the game & waited for the window to open, & when it didn't I closed it & reopened the console again. Same thing, but this time I saw it in my taskbar...how odd! So when clicking on it didn't open it, I right-clicked on it & in the menu I saw 'close window' & 'pioneers.exe', so I clicked on the 'pioneers.exe', thinking it would open the game window, but instead it opened an old version of the main game console, (called "Orb"), that was upgraded several years ago. Even more unusual, the old "Orb" was never installed on this PC!
Weird, huh?
I contacted WT tech support & they told me to uninstall/reboot/reinstall the App & the game, so I did...3-4 times!
The problem persisted, & since then I have followed every possible combination of the above procedure almost a dozen times!
As a last resort, I temporarily disabled my AV program, (even though I had all the correct 'exceptions' entered), & downloaded the App & game because I was hoping that maybe something was getting blocked in the download process. Unfortunately, my idea didn't work, either.
I sent an update to Wild Tangent & while waiting for my next set of instructions to troubleshoot this problem, I decided to do my normal maintenance, & I ran CCleaner. I cleaned out the junk files, then ran the Registry Scan.
While I normally just click the button to fix everything something caught my eye...there were about 15-20
errors that referred to Wild Tangent stuff, & I also noticed a missing Registry Key for "Open AL". Now, I'm not technically savvy, but I thought I remembered a while back I had to install "Open AL" for another game, so I wondered if there was a connection, or at least a hint of a possible solution. I don't know what ANY of these findings mean, but I know that I saw Open AL in the dropdown menu on my Program Files (x86) for Pioneer Lands, so if the Reg Key was missing for this program...then...then maybe....then I got a headache! As I said I'm not tech savvy, but stuff was bouncing around in my brain telling me that this might be related.
I'm attaching screenshots that show the dropdown menu & the results of the Registry Scan so you can see if there's something there that I need to fix or reinstall or delete or whatever. Believe me, at this point I'm SO frustrated, I'll try just about anything to get my game working again!
I even downloaded "Pioneer Lands" from 2 other sites, including Nevosoft, (the game's creator), & I get the exact result that I do when trying to play in Wild Tangent...it minimizes to my taskbar...period. I can hear the sounds of the game, but it won't open in a window to play it. To my very inexperienced mind, this means that either something's installed on my PC that shouldn't be, or a program that should be installed isn't OR I have the program installed, but it's been corrupted somehow.
Anyway, that's my story & I'm sticking to it! If you need any other info, just ask...I'm desperate to get my game working again!
Thank you for reading this entirely-too-long post & for any & all suggestions to help me fix this mess,.
Gratefully,
DogPal :confused:
 

Attachments

  • Pioneer Lands Menu.jpg
    Pioneer Lands Menu.jpg
    137.9 KB · Views: 74
  • Wild Tangent 'App' Menu.jpg
    Wild Tangent 'App' Menu.jpg
    134.4 KB · Views: 76
  • CCleaner Registry Scan, full view-9-16-14.jpg
    CCleaner Registry Scan, full view-9-16-14.jpg
    307.5 KB · Views: 72

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 64-bit
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo G585
    CPU
    AMD K140 40nm Technology
    Motherboard
    LENOVO LENOVO g585 (Socket FT1)
    Memory
    4.00GB DDR3 @665MHz (9-9-9-24)
    Graphics Card(s)
    Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz)
    Browser
    Firefox 23.0.1
    Antivirus
    TrendMicro Titanium Maximum Security
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