Tree of Savior Forum

Game won't launch: A debugger has been found running in your system

This error started with the December 27 patch. Has anyone been getting the same error, or has anyone been able to run the game on Windows XP 64 since that patch?

Bug Description : When Client_tos.exe tries to launch (either through steam or manually) it fails to launch and gives the error “A debugger has been found running in your system. Please, unload it from memory and restart your program.” There’s no debuggers or antivirus running, and the error still happens when Windows does a diagnostic startup with everything turned off.

Date and Time(Please, specify the timezone) : The first time the game tried to launch after the December 27 patch, a couple hours after maintenance ended. The game was working fine before maintenance. Last week I was logging into this computer remotely, so I didn’t get to reboot and turn things off until today.

Steps to reproduce the issue :

  1. Click on “play game” in Steam (or on Client_tos.exe manually)
  2. The error comes up and the game fails to launch

Screenshots / Video :


Here’s the processes running at the time (taskmgr.exe wasn’t running until after the error):

System

  • CPU : AMD Phenom II X4 965 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
  • RAM : 8190MB RAM
  • Graphics Card : Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4830 DirectX 9.0c
  • Mainboard : MSI MS-7641
  • Storage : Without ToS installed, 21.1GB free (300GB total)
  • OS : Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (5.2, Build 3790) Version 5.2.3790 Service Pack 2 Build 3790
  • Internet Connection : Cable
  • Country, Region : Eastern US

Google searches show people having this problem with other games (a lot of Nexon ones) due to AVG or Windows 10, but AVG isn’t installed. There’s no other antivirus running and no ToS addons, no Amdfix.sys file, no Creative Audigy, turning off windows firewall didn’t help, malware scans don’t find anything, and the same error still happens when the system is booted in diagnostic mode and all startup items and unnecessary services are disabled. Reinstalling the game from scratch didn’t fix it. The last maintenance didn’t fix it, but did give me pak update errors so I had to edit the release file to get debugger errors again.

Is this what they meant when the notes for that patch said this?

[quote]MISCELLANEOUS

  • The game should now run properly under Windows XP as intended.[/quote]

They meant 32 bits version tho.


As for your issue, do you have Visual Studio or something similar installed? Programming softwares have debugs and they generally make windows run as a service under svchost.exe or other system broker.

No sign of Visual Studio or the like in add/remove programs or the start menu. Killing all the svchost.exe’s didn’t stop the error, but it did trigger the self-destruct mechanism.

You shouldn’t kill the process, it is vital for the OS, i just asked if you had Visual Studio or other suit that deal with programming.

Since you don’t have let me check if there is something on winxp 64 any module that could cause that.

Edit: Not sure if this will help but worth a try.

To disable Dr. Watson

Click Start, click Run, type regedit.exe in the Open box, and then click OK.
Locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug
NOTE: Steps three and four are optional, However, they are necessary if you want to restore the default use of Dr. Watson.
Click the AeDebug key, and then click Export Registry File on the Registry menu.
Type a name and location for the saved registry file, and then click Save.
Delete the AeDebug key.
Registry entries for debugger programs are located in the AeDebug key in Windows. The Dr. Watson program is installed by default in Windows, and is configured to run when an application error occurs (with a data value of 1 for the Auto value). The default values are as follows:
Value Name = Auto
Type = String (REG_SZ)
Data Value = 1 or 0. (Default is 1)

Value Name = Debugger
Type = String (REG_SZ)
Data Value = drwtsn32 -p %ld -e %ld -g

NOTE: This data value (drwtsn32 -p %ld -e %ld -g) is specific to Dr. Watson. Alternative debuggers will have their own values and parameters.

To enable Dr. Watson

At a command prompt, type the following line, and then press ENTER:

drwtsn32 -i
Double-click the .reg file that you created in steps three and four that were discussed earlier.

AeDebug and Watson are gone, but the error is still there.

I have an old Windows XP 32bit computer to try it on and the game works there. Maybe not very well with those specs, but that’s better than nothing.

OS: Windows XP version 5.1.2600 service pack 3 32bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 7750 dual core 2.5GHz
RAM: 4096MB
Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce 8600GT
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3HP

Update; after upgrading to windows 8.1 the game works again. I suspect they added some low level anti-debugger check in the patch that has a bug on XP 64, but haven’t found anyone else using that version to compare.