Sherlock Holmes: Secret of the Silver Earring - won't start - Application error

Hello Boomers,

I have the digital copy of this game from GOG.com and cannot get it to run at all.
I get an error that pops up:

'The instruction at 0x0054cec4 referenced memory at 0x0054cec4.
The memory could not be written.'

The computer I'm using is running Windows 8.1 and it ran fine before not too long ago,
so I'm not sure what is the issue.

I tried playing with the compatibility settings and the DEP settings which worked before,
but no joy on either this time.

I also realized that I have the game on Steam too, but encounter the same issue.

Does anyone have an idea at what to do?

Thanks,
-Adam

Did you try running the game as an administrator (right-click the shortcut, choose Run As Administrator). That often helps me with memory access violation errors.

I think I did but will check again and see what happens.

I looked at the GOG forums and see you have already posted there. I found a post asking the same question from someone else about a year or so ago, but no answers. You can always send a trouble ticket to GOG. It will probably take several days for them to answer you though.

I'll try that, thanks Draclvr

So far no luck. I have a support ticket with GOG open and they are trying their best to help. I wonder if it's my virus scanner. It called Intrusta and it works really well, but I wonder if it's finding a game file that it doesn't like. Unlike my old virus scanner, it doesn't have a place to add trusted files.

Usually an AV will pop up something that tells you it has flagged a file as dangerous. But I don't know anything about Intrusta.

There could be a problem with Intrusta's firewall feature blocking Galaxy hooks.
GOG decided to start integrating Galaxy hooks into their game executables maybe 3 years ago.
So when the game is started, one of the first things that happen is the Galaxy hooks that GOG embedded in the game executable try to reach out to the Internet. That can cause problems with some firewalls, which block the Galaxy hooks. Most consumer firewalls will by default allow game-related things, like Galaxy hooks, to pass information through to or from the Internet without notifying the user. But there have been exceptions, and Intrusta does have a firewall.

There was brief discussion of the problem in ***this thread***. Especially see oldmariner's posts in that thread. He'd configured his Zone Alarm firewall not to allow any information to pass through to the Internet without notifying him and giving him the option to either block or allow it. The game wouldn't start if his firewall blocked traffic and he found a Galaxy-related .dll file in the game folder, even though he'd downloaded through his web browser and not Galaxy. However if he disconnected his computer from the Internet and told Zone Alarm to allow traffic to the Internet, the game would start (even though nothing was going out with no Internet connection -- the game only had to be allowed to "try" to send information).

I don't know if GOG ever fixed the problem. There's been very little discussion of problems with Galaxy hooks and firewalls in GOG games online -- at least not where search engines can find discussions.