Creative_ALchemy_AL6_Cleanup.0001

[MindParadox]

<p>Creative_ALchemy_AL6_Cleanup.0001.dir.0248</p><p>^^^ this thing starts popping up in droves whenever i start EQ2, and usually within about 20 minutes, the game is unplayable unless i minimize it, go to the task bar, and select each individually and end process each one</p><p>(yesterday, i had 491 of them, which caused my system to give me an out of memory message, which is VERY disconcerting as i have 8 gigs of RAM in a 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate installation, and EQ2 is a 32 bit program which cant address more than 4GB maximum)</p><p>attempting to find the source of the problem, i went to the process file, which took me to the above folder name, when i tried to delete it, it said it couldnt, because the files inside were open and in use by Everquest2.exe (by the way, i tested it with all of them, somehow, Everquest2.exe managed to open enough of these that they took up nearly 3 gigs of RAM by themselves)</p><p>looking on the web, i cant find any mention of this, any reason why its doing this, and i cant find any way to stop it</p><p>whats worse is, there is no sound card in my computer, only a USB headset, so why i would have a Creative Labs ALchemy program(designed for use with Creative cards so that EAX works in Windows Vista and Windows 7) running at all is a mystery to me</p><p>any help with stopping this would be awesome, as its both my wife and my computers affected</p><p>for info, they are both Windows 7 Ultimate, mine is 64 bit, hers is 32 bit</p><p>both ran EQ2 fine for years (her computer was built for Kunark, mine for TSO and then upgraded from XP(hers) and Vista(mine)) without this ever occurring.  then we came back after a few months away from the game(we didnt uninstall, just stopped playing) and this has started(we came back 3 weeks ago)</p><p>someone tell me they have an answer for this, its very aggravating, and makes playing the game VERY hard to have fun with, as we spend the first hour or two waiting for our system to suddenly crash or bog down completely so we can end process this and then get on with playing</p>

[vochore]

<p>do you know what motherboard you have,some of the higher end motherboards come with a version of x-fi sound chips on the motherboard and if so alchemy might have been installed as part of your mb drivers.</p><p>also check your installed programs for alchemy,if you dodnt use your mb audio just uninstall it.</p>

[MindParadox]

<p>thats the thing, the onboard audio on both our machines use realtek drivers, and mine is disabled at the bios level</p><p>never installed anythying creative on my system and dont have an option to uninstall anything alchemy at all(nothing Creative either) thats what makes this so frustrating</p><p>and, ive actually figured out how to force this to happen, all i have to do is start EQ2 and switch between the miles 3d audio and dolby surround(EAX isnt even listed as an option in the ingame sound) and it immediately floods my system with this cleanup thing</p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p>I wouldn't be able to tell you how it appeared on your system but does it appear on the Uninstall programs list?</p><p>What devices appear under the Sound, video and game controllers list in your Device Manager?  (Right click Computer and select Manage, click Device manager on the left pane).</p>

[MindParadox]

<p>nothing to uninstall, i dont even get the service the first person talked about, just the processes</p><p>and i watched as the game loaded up this time, AS Everquest2.exe is loading, so do all the alchemy cleanup processes</p><p>the only thing listed under sound video and game controllers is "Plantronics .Audio 655 DSP"</p><p>and yeah, ive scanned this system with both online and local virus scanners, spybot, malware bytes, and a couple other programs, hand verified the registry, and completely uninstalled and reinstalled everquest 2</p><p>also, i have tried to see if i could make anything else on my system start this process up, no joy, it ONLY happens when Everquest2.exe is loading up</p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p>Could you get your DXDIAG information to me?  You can PM the info to me.</p>

[MindParadox]

<p>sent it to ya</p><p>incidentally, on my wifes system and mine, after the recent patch, its now flooding our systems as the game loads, not really sure whats changed</p><p>course, if i clear em all using the nice script i created to auto kill the processes as soon as they appear, the game doesnt load properly (i have to wait till im in the game to run the script)</p>

[Laiina]

<p>It is a Creative bug, but not sure how to fix it. Only seen it once before and that was a few months back and not on EQ2.</p><p>As I recall, it was finally fixed by installing the <strong><a href="http://support.creative.com/downloads/?h=7#" target="_blank">Creative update</a></strong> and updating the Flash player. No guarantee this will fix it, but that computer was similar in that it had been upgraded from Vista to Win7.</p>

[MindParadox]

<p>ill definitely look into that, altho i cant really see what update i would need from creative, as im not using anything of theirs <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>but hey, if it works, i thank ya <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[MindParadox]

<p>ok, updates applied, didnt work, altho now i have the latest software for my dell webcam(apparently creative makes the driver and software for it)</p><p>this maka me sad <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p>Yeah I can't find any connection between it and our software other than if you, or the client, attempts to use EAX it will launch the software that governs it which in your case is somehow the Alchemy application.  You may need to contact Creative for a method of removing that.</p>

[MindParadox]

<p>yeah, i did, they asked for a copy of Everquest2.exe and confirmed that something inside it is calling the cleanup</p><p>i ghosted my machine and did a fresh install of windows 7 with nothing on it at all</p><p>nvidia driver for my video card and installed eq2</p><p>viola, up pops this creative alchemy cleanup thing again</p><p>now, considering that i didnt have a single sound ANYTHING installed on my system(according to the device manager there IS nothing under sound video and game controllers) that would point it right back to EQ2 being the problem</p><p>also, this is happening on my wifes machine as well.</p><p>if i wasnt worried about being sued by SOE for copyright infringement or something stupid like that id just decompile the EXE and figure out what the hell is goin on, but since i am, i wont do that <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>needless to say, while Everquest2.exe is running as a process on my system, i cannot delete the files and folders this is putting in my temp folder</p><p>ill add a screenshot of it soon <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[MindParadox]

<p><img src="http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pwUA15GoQODUntQiEkNzlhvQFYBMFaMLVB7rNApgkq5WZF0v YhGwQjnbjhDFaDxgXXH17ruYWEtcrghXTflJV5A/cleanup%20delete.bmp?psid=1" width="1580" height="745" /></p><p>the top one shows what happens when i try to delete the files from my temp directory</p><p>the bottom one shows them spawning in my system(my little script usually catches all but about 20 of em and closes em out)</p><p><img src="http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pJKDegIDXMTUovep38GuMmKpiYUndq2w-hHzkZ1Jg7tunrm-zdErUltosR08FMEqqoC64WcwLwTey1GAWBdVNZA/Cleanup.bmp?psid=1" width="1339" height="573" /></p>

[MindParadox]

<p>so i fixed it</p><p>removed the call from everquest2.exe and now everything is fine</p><p>so long and thanks for all the fish!</p>