Contacting Stardock About Start Product Issues

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If you have any issues that were not resolved by reviewing the documentation here, we very much would like to still work with you on them. We use our forums for this so as to help the most people for the longest period of time. The forums are staffed with support personnel, developers, and seasoned users of our products. If a search of our forums also does not provide relief, please create your own thread using the following format.

Post Title

The title of the post should be brief but descriptive - for example:

Crash: Starting Multiplayer Match Crashes

App Usage: Do X to get Y but Z happens instead

Gameplay: Tech tree not giving proper bonus

MODs: My MOD is not showing up

Installation: App \ Game fails on instal with error

Body

More detail about your issue should include:

Exact Version of Windows, Game, or Application

The exact version of Windows can be obtained by running Winver.exe from a search. Posting an image of that would be sufficient. Example:

New or existing issue

Has the issue been happening for some time or is it new, perhaps since an update to the game, app, or Windows itself? Detail as much as possible what changes seem to have corresponded to your issue(s).

How to reproduce

If the issue is reproducible, please provide exact steps on how to do so. For game issues, if possible, uploading a save game to a cloud drive service and sharing a link in the post is very helpful.

Images \ Video \ Saves (for games)

If possible, any images and videos greatly help with troubleshooting. Images can be copied and pasted directly into a post. Videos (and Saved games) can be uploaded to a cloud drive service and a shared link included in the post.

Crash Dumps

Software Crash Collection

If you are experiencing crashes that you believe are caused by one of Stardock’s products, we would really like a dump file from a crash if you are willing to use WinDBG to capture it.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windbg-preview/9pgjgd53tn86?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

Once installed, you would make it the default postmortem debugger (click for larger image):

When a crash happens, it will pop WinDBG and PC could become rather slow while it works through it.

Example of what you would type there using your Windows account name instead of ‘sdrohan' and the specific product name if different than 'Fences’:

.dump /mf c:\users\sdrohan\desktop\Fences_RiverComb_04062022.dmp

The dump command (with the period), the /mf switch, where you want it put, and a name that indicates what app
that it's yours, and the date.

When it is done, you can click the red 'Stop Debugging' button:

The resulting file will likely be BIG, perhaps hundreds of MBs, too large to send uncompressed.

Stardock Games Crash Collection

Most all Stardock games have an in-game popup that asks for some details about the crash (what you were doing in-game, is it repeatable, etc).

Email address: Completly optional and we only ever use them for cases where we want to reach out to you for more information and help with resolving any particular issue.

If you do end up creating a forum thread about your issue, note in it that you submitted a crash report and the 1st portion (or some portion) of your email address so we can look it up here. For example, if your email address is jim555@acme.com, you can write ‘Crash report look up: jim555’ and we can use that partial. If you are not comfortable posting any portion of it, when we respond, you can private message the one of us that responds with what it is.

If for some reason this in-app crash prompt is no longer showing for you, click here.