It just won't load

[Quena]

I've read around the posts and on other sites that EB has extremely long load times. Well, extreme is far from it for me. I installed fine, 100% no problems, RTW was clean and V1.5, EB installed itself nicely with no promblems. After installation i restarted my computer, nothing came up so I was hoping for the best. With the RTW Disc 1 inserted, i clicked on the new EB Short Cut, the game started up fine, I waited acouple of mins for it to kick in, then the EB starter screen came up, (lasted for around 8 mins or so), knowning that the RTW games did have quiet long loading times, I didnt worry. When it came to the first EB loading screen, liturally, I waited for over an hour to load, and it STILL didnt load anything! I searched on these forums, and found the thread on to how to increase the speed of EB, and the main steps I couldnt follow because I couldnt even get to the Main Menu with Options...I did follow the other steps by getting rid of some of the processes in the background, i got rid of a few programs, and I ALSO increased my "Total Paging FIle Size" as one member had suggested.
Now the original RTW runs 100% FINE, the loading times last for around 5-10 secs, and I am completely stumped to why nothing has worked.
I am sure that my computer is fit to run this Mod;
"Pentium 4
CPU 3.20 GHz
512 MB of RAM
Nvidia 6200 series Graphic Card"

What do I do, and please don't tell me to let it load...:wall:
Thanks

[Strategos Alexandros]

If it is a memory issue you need some more RAM. 1 - 2 gigs is enough for EB although I can't see how this could affect EB and not RTW.

[Quena]

I'm not having any problems with the original RTW.
And I know that EB is a computer hog, but surely it doesn't need the latest SLI computer to run it.:shame:

[Tellos Athenaios]

512 MB RAM is where your pain is.

Beyond the obvious (more memory cells means more can be loaded at the same time) let me explain.

We know that part of the routines/methods that the game executes is about finding all the files on your disk. You can verify this by running ProcMon in the background and filter out everything not related to EB. (You'd be surprised to see how many files are accessed which don't seem needed right away at all...)

Part of its routine/method is also to parse a number of crucial files, typically all files prefixed by export_ . That means for every such file entire internal datastructure must be built; and written as memory mapped files on the disk (if the memory isn't sufficient to store those files).

With a mod where those files a much, much large than the Vanilla ones; nevermind now fact that RTW itself (fully patched) is of less size than the EB modfolder... And sure, not all of RTW must be loaded for much is also covered by EB; but the total amount of file size to pass through the loading routines well exceeds that of whatever passes through Vanilla RTW. Perhaps it even exceeds what this program was designed for.


So in short: with 512 MB of RAM which is shared by your OS + drivers + other background apps + RTW... I guess the only real solution will be to buy more RAM.

[Quena]

Hmm..ok =/, i guess I will have to.
One last question, can RTW and RTW:EB run on a 64 Bit computer (Windows XP)?

[Mediolanicus]

I also only have 512MB.
At first EB wouldn't load on my PC either. Or when it would reach menu it would CDT immediately.
Then was until I found this thread. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=100384

Now I'm playing EB without problems...

[Tellos Athenaios]

Yes but please do keep in mind that 1GB swap/page files corresponds (to the OP's) RAM in a ratio of 2:1.

If you find your page/swap file is lower than that 'magical' 1GB (or 1024MB) of RAM, it is a good thing to not touch it. In general it's a good thing to be careful with swap/page file because it may seem simple but the OS *has* to maintain a pagefile table *in* your RAM + do the disk I/O operations.

There are two reasons why excess page/swap file is therefore actually a resource hog:
1) The page table will get significantly large (each page corresponds to 1 entry in the page table @4 bytes at a 32bit system, but @8 bytes on a 64bit one)
2) The reason outlined in that thread (the OS will need to do a lot of work for a lot of data which simply can't be used efficiently: keep in mind that your phyiscal memory (RAM) determines how much pages can actually be loaded into it...)

Therefore I am very skeptical about a magical number of '1GB' of page file. It may work out just fine on certain systems, and I am willing to believe most systems designed for XP will indeed benefit from this (the 512MB RAM category) *but* "XP guru say magical number is" is not convincing for me.

[Mediolanicus]

I'm not saying it's something that will magically work. I'm just saying it worked for me. Not just the page file btw...

Anyway, without it I can't play EB. I will get a new pc someday, but in the meantime I can manage with this temporary solution.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I was commenting to what I read in *that* thread (the OP said 'its what XP gurus reccommed', basically) -- not to the thread itself which is overall actually quite helpful and contains lots of valid/valuable tips/observations. Sorry for the misunderstanding.