eqgame.exe - Bad Image error

[Shenlon]

Alright, I'm not sure what's going on but everything i've tried to get the latest MQ patch to work for me hasn't worked. First I just did what I normally do, download the patch, compile, add plugins, move the directory. Did all that, never saw any errors and boom I get hit with

"The application or DLL C:\MQ2\mq2labels.dll is not a valid windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette."

I don't have any idea what that means, the only thing I can tell you is that I did just switch to the method ascii38 pointed out using MSVCTools to compile.

After wrestling around and completely starting all over with no plugins or anything I did manage to get MQ to work if I waited until I was already in game and then loaded it, but then after ~3 minutes I would be sitting at the server select. I did read the post in regards to the server select occurrence, however did not find a suitable answer from the thread.

I played for ~8 hours yesterday before I even though about messing with MQ and never ONCE got kicked to server select, and now as soon as I try to use MQ I can't stay in game longer than 5 mins.

If someone can please help me figure out what I did wrong, it would be much appreciated, I am lost beyond all hope from my standpoint.


***EDIT***
BTW I get the message about the DLL for mq2itemdisplay and mq2chatwnd as well, it pops up a couple times i'm assuming for all of the plugins it tries to load on default.

[Zornecro]

The setvars.bat advice in the building (sticky) topic is important, as it sets the environment to the correct one needed for MQ2 to function. There's also a /set COMPILER=7 needed before the compile. I believe the setvars sets things to UNICODE instead of ascii38, that may be the problem.

Of course I'm talking about stuff applicable to compiling from the command line, as I don't have the IDE stuff and never seem to get one of those 3-hour trial sessions open when I want one.