Crashes and a virus

Hi Fleeters.

Looks like I was stupid and picked up a virus from the you tube downloader. It has seriously messed up my computer. I've tried many things and it's still there. It pulls up multiple windows of junk web pages and crashes Arc and The game itself.

Open to suggestions if anyone has any. Also feel bad as I am not helping out with the fleets. It's been about a week. I hope to get things fixed asap.

Pretty sure I will be taking the computer in tomorrow. But I also seem to remember there were sometimes problems with the game crashing from the launcher. Guidance on that? I've put in a bunch of cryptic tickets when the crash happens. Haven't heard anything or been able to see if I've had any reply to those tickets.

Sorry for the ramble there. Lol

If you're taking the PC for service, they should be able to handle your virus issue.

Once that's done if you want to bypass the Arc launcher and just start STO without it, that's easy enough. It doesn't need to be running to start the game at all. If you ever get any bonuses/freebies from Arc that apply in-game though, you will need to start the game from the launcher one time in order to claim them (for example: the Khan off-duty costume).

The launcher is an unstable resources hog that (best I can tell) has several memory addressing conflicts with the STO client, plus it's an always-on Internet app so it's using up some of your bandwidth too. It used to crash the game on me all the time so I always bypass it. Here's how:

Look for the folder named "Star Trek Online_en" which should be inside your "Program Files (x86)\Arc" folder. You should see "Star Trek Online.exe" in there, so just right-drag a shortcut from that to your desktop, or right-click it and you can pin to either the Windows start menu or the taskbar.

At that point you can either ignore or delete your original Arc shortcut, and just use your new one to start the game without the launcher fighting with STO for system resources.

I went and uninstalled both the game and arc again. Anything that seemed to have a browser window would pull up those multiple pages of junk.

Thanks for the info about bypassing things. Once I get things back to normal I am sure to give that a try. I had a crash ingame that I was getting that msg about needing to scan the game files every time I launched the game. So I reinstalled and that seems like when the virus problem rose up.

Thank you Tekno! Very good info :)

ok, so my virus seems to be taken care of. but for the life of me I can't seem to remember how to download the game. I've installed Arc, I've gone to the Arc page. I've tried the star trek online set up exe. tried to click the "play game" that comes up. Cryptic crashes ever time I do that. I have no idea what to do now. :(

OK, at that point I'm not sure what it could be. If it won't even install then that seems to point at debris from the previous installation. Not all uninstallers actually remove stuff as completely as they should, sometimes they leave stuff behind that they shouldn't have.

Step 1: Close every single program that you have running, then temporarily disable your antivirus protection (especially if you use AVG, which is a real asshole about STO for some reason). You don't want to be fighting with mindlessly overzealous AV software while you're trying to fix something.

Step 2: Bring up Task Manager with CTL-ALT-DEL and look for a process called CrypticError.exe. It's their useless crash reporter, which will interfere with any subsequent attempt to launch, load or alter the game files in any way. If you see it, right-click it and end the process. If you don't see it, good -- move to the next step.

Step 3: Go to Control Panel and uninstall both Arc and STO again (don't use the Arc uninstaller in the program folder), then go into your Program Files (x86) folder and visually confirm the uninstall. As long as you don't see an Arc folder (and/or a Star Trek Online_en folder) after the uninstall runs, then you've confirmed the full uninstall. If you do see the folder even after running the Control Panel uninstall, you'll want to force-delete that folder by highlighting the folder then pressing SHIFT-DEL. You should see a Windows popup asking if you're sure you want to permanently delete it, click Yes.

Step 4: Empty the Windows Recycle Bin just to be sure it's all really gone, then reboot Windows before attempting to reinstall. Rebooting will also re-enable your AV software.

Once you're logged back into Windows, you can retry the Arc download and install from the "Play for Free" button on the website again. Otherwise (and I can't speak for this personally), a lot of people say that installing STO from Steam works for them.

If all that still fails, then you're stuck contacting Arc support and hoping they're not as useless as they usually are. Good luck.

Thanks for all the help and guidance. I finally came across a folder I'd missed with just the game in it. Fond the .exe and then waited for nearly 14 gb download and install. Lol. Been playing for a week or so now. Glad to be back.

Welcome Back! :woohoo: