Railworks.exe has stopped working

[derrick706]

I am having a little problem. It doesn't occur on every route. But, when I try to run certain routes like for example Portland Terminal, Ohio Steel 2, Colton and Northern, Cologne to Dusseldorf and other older routes TS2014 crashes to desktop and gives me "Railworks.exe has stopped working. Windows will try to find a solution". Does anyone know how to fix this? It didn't happen like that until the 2014 upgrade. All of my routes and scenarios ran fine on TS2013. It's pretty frustrating. There is about half of my game content that I can't run. I have done all of the standard things....cleared the cache, verified the game files and even turned the detail level down a couple of notches to no avail. I emailed RSC and they weren't much help. They told me that TS2014 no longer supports Adobe Flashplayer. It's something going on with the older routes. So, it would be nice if they redid all of the older routes with the new technology then since I spent money on all of that content over the years. Does anyone else have this issue? Is there a way to fix it? Thanks.

[Chacal]

That sounds like you've met our friend pOntrack.bin!

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9915

[derrick706]

Thanks for the advice and the link. I followed that and did what it said and still no luck. I really don't know what else to do. It seems to me that RSC needs to come out with a fix for this problem. If anyone else out there has any other suggestions, I would appreciate it.

[buzz456]

Derrick. RSC can't fix what's not broke on their end. I have every US route ever made I think and they all load just fine so the problem is somewhere on your end. Have you run logmate on your boot cycle? That will identify at what file the thing crashes and then we can go about fixing what ails you. Have do done a search of your entire Railworks folder for the dreaded PONtrack files? They can be lurking in funny places and certainly cause many problems.

[derrick706]

No I haven't run logmate. I am unfamiliar with how to do that. How do I do that? Also, I will try searching the railworks folder for more of those pontrack occurrences. Thanks for taking the time to help me out. I really want this working. I want to be able to run any route that I have. This also happens with some of the European routes I have as well(older ones).

[Chacal]

You don't have to search for the file, the instructions I gave you will find them all and delete them.

In Windows explorer, go to your Railworks folder.
Right-click on the folder and select "Open a command window here"
In the command window, type this:
del /S PONtrack.bin

It will find and delete all occurences of this file and you should be all set.
Note: that's a capital "O", not a zero.

As for Logmate, search the forums here, you'll find instructions.

[derrick706]

Well, when I right click on the railworks folder, it doesn't give me that choice. So, I opened my command prompt and did that from there(as was in the other posts on that topic) and it seemed to have found and deleted those pontrack.bin occurrences. Then I cleared the cache as well. then I tried running an older route and it still crashed the same way. So, is there somewhere else that one of those could be that was found by that command? I will try to figure out the logmate thing and try that. Thanks

[derrick706]

It worked! It actually worked! Hooray! I went and searched that logmate and figured out how to do that. Then, if had yet another pontrack.bin in the Kuju/railnetwork/trackrules folder. So, That led me to where the file was. So, I went and found it and deleted it and then held my breath as I tried to load scenarios from Ohio Steel 2 and a couple of the other routes that this occuring in and was not keeping my hopes up...lol. But then to my delight, it worked! Great! Thanks to everyone for the help.

[Chacal]

You're welcome and I'm quite happy for you.
The question that bothers me, though, is why did the "del /S pOntrack.bin" not work completely.

[arizonachris]

The question that bothers me, though, is why did the "del /S pOntrack.bin" not work completely.

I thought it was "PONtrack.bin", not as you typed it. Would make a difference.

[Chacal]

As long as it's the letter "o" and not a zero, it should work.
Dos commands are not case-sensitive.

[arizonachris]

Never was good at DOS commands. Thanks, Chacal.

[Chacal]

Today's interesting tidbit of irrelevant information: NTFS (the file system used by Windows) is now case-sensitive, in order to make it compliant with Unix/Linux file systems. But WIndows does not make use of this, which is why case doesn't matter with DOS commands.
But it can cause headaches when writing scripts and applications, causing different behaviors on Windows XP vs Windows 7, or Windows 7 vs Linux.

I have seen a few cases of problems in Railworks that may have been caused by this, for example assets not loading when the only difference is capital letters in the file path.

[NSrailfan6130]

Ok, every time i try to load a route Railwroks exe stops working so i veridied the files, but didnt work and now i searched for PONtrack and deleted the PONtrack.bin's but there is a PONtrack.off and a PONtrack.zap, should i delete those as well?

[Chacal]

Yes but I doubt they are causing your problem.
Did you add a route or an asset just before this problem started?