The update utility runs, then I click the launch vendetta button, then I get the famous 'encountered and error and has to close.' whats the deal?

what,

Operating system
Video card
processor

Edit, duh, obviously windows with that error message.

so, what video card, and do you have the most current drivers?

Asus Nvida Clone of the FX 5800
I have driver set 6.14.10.6693. Those are the newest available.
I have directx 9.0c, which is also the newest, certianly new enough for this game..

To further elaborate. I CTD seconds after game launch most of the time.

What *specific* O/S? Win9x/W2K/XP? If W2k/XP, are you running the latest service pack and installed all critical updates? Are you experiencing this problem with any other installed software?

Have you checked for viruses or spyware?

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/sbdownload.html

Have you run defragment or scandisk recently?
Have you run diagnostics on your hardware?

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso
http://www.passmark.com/download/index.htm
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

hmmm, ok, i want you to do a few things hoffa, I occasionally get the same crash.

Start vendetta, let it crash, do not attempt to open it again immediately. Open your vendetta directory and click on the bug-reporter, that will let you send your errors log to the devs. (do not use the reporter on the site since it has no way to get your errors.log)

Next. Is vendetta the first thing you try to run when you start up your computer? or do you run other programs first. If it isn't, restart your computer and see if vendetta will launch as the first thing you try to run.

If it is happening as the first thing you try to run, adjust your sound volume via windows before you try to run the updater (yes i know that is a wierd piece of advise, but sometimes I think vendetta crashes when it's trying to initilize the sound, and doing that usually works for me).

Windows XP SP2.

I tired your suggestions spellcast, no luck.
The wierd thing is, the game sometimes works fine. It's a really random problem, its unfortunate tho that it CTD more often than it runs.... I'll try what you reccommended paetric, although I usually do all of that fairly regularly. . . and no, I don't have this problem with other apps.

Is the Bug Reporter program running? If not, can you try manually running it right after VO crashes and then submit the bug report? This should help determine what the problem is. Don't re-run VO before running the bug reporter though, because it would delete the crash log. The bug reporter is located in the directory where you installed VO to.

A reinstall didn't fx the problem either.

Reading your submitted bug report, the scanner crashes the Windows client if you try firing the scanner. The bug is fixed but hasn't been released yet. I dunno if that's the same problem you're always having, though.

The scanner didn't crash my machien this morning...

That scanner bug was unrelated... or it may be... I don't know. The
bugin question has to do with launching the game, once I'm in game everything seems to run as it should.....

1.8 seems more stable on launch so far... don't know why that would be.