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tsr
12-11-2002, 20:01
Has anyone had their Battles crash to the desktop.

I spent some time with support yesterday trying to trouble shoot, but it was escalated to development...and I was given a trouble ticket.

Details:

BAttle map will freeze in approx 10 seconds most of the time after I have clicked begin battle button. It seems to correllate with the movement of troops in large numbers. I think that when I've engaged in a battle with 8 or more troops that the battle freezes most often. It will play music for another 10 seconds and then crash.

The only thing updated is the crash.txt file.

The computer I'm using is an AMD 1000mhz chip not overclocked with a VIA chipset MotherBoard. It has 768 MB ram. The Video is a Verto GeForce4 64MB card with the most recent detonator 4109 drivers.

I've reinstalled the sound card drivers which is an OnBoard Soundblaster compatible VIA driver, which I've not found a new driver for. Though I've updated the 4 in 1 drivers for the MB.

I've reproduced this problem at any and every screen resolution. and with 32 and 16 bit resolution too.

NOTE: Sometimes I can engage in battle without crashing to the desktop. It seems as though it is after I've made a change of some effect. Once after I decreased the PCI textures field for the Video card and again after I lowered the screen resolution from 32 to 16 bit did the game not crash in a large battle. however the 2nd or 3rd battle crashed in just 10 seconds.

So, I can get a somewhat of a reprieve, but not much.

Has anyone had a similar problem or have ideas?

A willing player if I can get past this problem.

T.Sr.

Gregoshi
12-12-2002, 05:33
Howdy tsr and welcome. I thought Wizards of the Coast bought you out a few years ago... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif Er, sorry, you probably get that one all the time. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

Anyway, regarding your trouble - have you tried the suggestions here (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=2;t=772;hl=crash+and+geforce4)?

Post back if none of this worked/works.

tsr
12-16-2002, 19:43
I've tried all the forum suggestions, but I don't seem to have any luck with them.

it does not seem to matter what memory settings are at on the card or in BIOS. The battle map is determined to crash to the desktop after halting in the beginning of the battle.

I heard a comment about someone saying that it's worse with a lot of trees.

And this is something that I can partially support, but not without looking at it closer can I confirm for sure.

T.Sr.

barech
12-23-2002, 19:57
My game crashes any time not just during battles? And I don't crash to desk top. Is it the same fix? Sometimes I have a hard time recovering. Can anybody offer any advise? I have 866mhz, 512 ram and onboard video and audio. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

KukriKhan
12-24-2002, 05:27
Hi barech, welcome to the.Org http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I 'zapped' your duplicate posts. No offense m8, just trying to cut down on repetitiveness. At what point does MTW crash for you: the intro movie? the 1st menu?

And you say it doesn't crash to desktop; Windows crashes as well? Which OS do you have? Have you downloaded 'the patch' yet?

barech
12-24-2002, 15:40
Thanks for the clean up. I had dups because I kept getting an error message. I crash at different times. On the campaign screen, on the battle field even while trying to load. Sometimes I can play all night and other times I can't even load my saved game. But Yesterday I had to reinstall XP it was totally fried. Would not boot up at all not even in safe mode. I have all of the latest patches and updates. Hope you can help, because it’s a great game.

KukriKhan
12-25-2002, 15:41
OK, so you have WinXP on (I guess) a newer machine with 1Ghz processor (or better). MTW crashes randomly, taking XP with it. Without more hardware/software details...I'll take a stab at it:

First: download MTW patch v1.1 from here
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/MTW/Patches.shtml
to clean up some compatibility issues with XP.

Second: here is a laundry-list of generic problems guys have had, and the fixes, courtesy of senior member Kraellin:
--------------quote----------------
what o/s are you using?

also, try setting your agp aperture to 64.

you've got two hogs fighting for the same trough. i'm assuming with an ntfs system that you're either running win2k or winxp, both are hogs and so is this game. so, it's no real surprise that changing the priority of the game would affect its performance. windows does not just go to sleep when you run the game. and despite turning off tasks there are still processes that windows runs while running any other program. think of it as two screaming kids both fighting for the various chip's attention. frankly, i sometimes think we were better off when it was all DOS games http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

you might also check the other bios settings while yer in there changing the agp and see if anything can be done to improve resource allocations.

you can also turn off anti-aliasing. this has helped some folks with the FPS.

turn off smoke and fauna in the game options, if it's not already.

check the microsoft update site for tweaks that might help.

your system looks like it shld handle just about anything the game can throw at it, though. i do know that a lot of folks with the geforce4 cards have complained about slowdowns. might be something going on there also. not sure.

check windows safe mode for duplicate device entries in device manager.

check windows safe mode for multiple driver entries.

check windows safe mode for device faults.

run a full diagnostic with something like sandra 2000.

run all the tests with dxdiag.

check your startup config for unnecessary startup programs. windows and other programs like to sneak things in there that are totally unwanted.

check your system info for forced devices and irq and dma conflicts. also note if one or more irq's are 'overcrowded' with a lot of devices all using the same irq, especially the sound card and vid card both on the same irq.

disable the screen saver.

disable or tweak the ACPI stuff, but be a bit careful on that one. you can get some weird shutdown stuff going on there with that one.

under 'system information\components' look under 'problem devices' to see if anything is listed.

you've got a more than adequate system there. mtw shld run fine. if it's not, and you're getting major slows, then something else is eating is hogging the resources, either windows, a memory leak, a bad device, slow drivers, or something. check everything and lemme know if you find anything.
---------------end----------------

barech
12-27-2002, 03:01
Already had the 1.1 download plus a couple of other changes I made. I will try all of your suggestions. I feel like I would be better off going to the dentist. Thanks again.

tsr
12-30-2002, 14:33
Removing 256 MB RAM solved my problem.

I'm running windows 98. (Edited 95 to 98)
I had 768 MB RAM.

Windows has a major problem with large files. It chokes on them citing there is not enough resouces. Please free some up. At which point you curse the computer sice you have more than 512 mb RAM and there is no problem with resources.

So, make the computer 512 mb ram.

Will fix the crash to desktop from the battle maps on Windows 98 Second Edition.

T.Sr.

barech
12-30-2002, 20:50
I only have 512 RAM. I am beginning to think that my motherboard might be the problem. The reason I think is because the problem is now happening while I do other programs. I was in the internet and it froze and the same message appeared. IRQL_not equal_ not less or something like that. Sometimes it just gives me the blue screen with the message from Microsoft about shutting down to protect my computer with no explanation.

tsr
12-30-2002, 21:25
It sounds like you have an IRQ confilict possibly.

First backup your registry.
Start>Run type in:

regedit

Then select from the menu backup.

Back it up to a floppy and your desktop.

Second: If you right click on My Computer and select properties at the bottom of the menu You will see a window with 4 tabs on it. Select the tab that says device manager. Then look in the list of devices that you have connected to your computer and look for any Yellow Warning icons or Any icons that indicate there is a problem. A yellew ? or are good indications of a problem.

If you do see them look at their properties. Remove them and reinstall them or disable them.

Third: Then reboot your computer in safe mode. Press F5 upon booting up.

Then go BAck into device manager and look to see how many items are duplicated for each device and then look thru the devices that exist beneath the motherboard device. (This can be particularly tricky since many items here are duplicated on purpose.) This last step may not be neccessary after you have removed any possibly duplicated devices.

After that play.

Good luck

T.Sr.

barech
12-30-2002, 22:47
I haven't checked the safe mode part but already had checked my device manager evertything was fine there. I just recently switched to XP from 98 because I was having really bad problems (and because I got a legit copy for free) but they continue in XP. When I get home I will try it. Thanks.

barech
01-08-2003, 15:34
Happy New Year to all.
I checked my config with the help of a friend and didn't change a thing.
I cleaned up the Early.txt file and started a new campaign as the Turks and to my disbelief I have not crashed once. I already had the new patch v1.1 installed and just made a few minor changes and clean up a few lines. Here is basically what I did.
1. Took of all land bridges (Spanish are too strong now, might put this one back on. I guess AI doesn't like to invade by sea)
2. Added agents to Danes (poor guys)
3. Made Africa playable
4. Made all factions major except Golden Horde (I like the idea of the invasion)
5. Changed start date to 1000.
6. Changed region ownership to coincide with the historical year 1000 map I found on the web.
I don't believe any of the above helped my situation. But the one change that might have was that I eliminated all excess information. Such as there are some entries for Golden Khanate region that are just there for I don't know what, and I removed any region that changed or were repeated, there was one. With the above so far so good. Hope this might help others.

barech
02-10-2003, 17:55
Just as a follow up I have played one complete game (lost) and 130 years into another one and have not crashed once since my clean up. hOPe you guys have had the same luck.