Campaign Crash help

[yoko366]

I am new here as I just bought MTW I have seen many people have the same problem as I in when trying to load single player campaigns or tutorial campaign the computer puts me back to my desktop,
I have a,
Toshiba Satelite 2400 with
256 memeory
s3 supersavage 16mb grapgic card (could be problem although meets min specs)
I have tried many suggestions that I have already read in the forum, oh I also upgraded to media player 9 and directX 9 to see if that would help any other suggestions.

[Aelwyn]

Welcome yoko http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I posted your problem in the Apothecary here (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=2;t=5033;r=1;&#top) and hopefully you will get a response soon.

What specifically happens when you try to load the campaign? Does it load at all, like say to 20%, and then crash? Or does it crash right when you try yo start a campaign. I had a problem sort of like that with Shogun. What I did was change my settings to 16 colors, and then loaded the campaign, and it worked fine that way. Then once I played a turn, saved and quit the game. Changed the colors back to my previous setting and then loaded the campaign, and it worked fine. But more info on your specific problem would help.

What OS do you have?

[Baron von Beer]

Well, I did some digging, and came up with this..

S3 video cards are not supported by the game. Most people who used them, had the same exact problems. *HOWEVER*

It seems some people have tried reverting back to older version drivers for S3 video cards, and this worked. This was with desktop version though. (you state this is a Toshiba, so I assume laptop? Never seen a Toshiba desktop. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ) So dunno how helpful going to older drivers (if there are any, laptop video drivers are made by laptop manufacturers, unforunately) will be. Can't hurt to check though.


Go to

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin....gdglj.0 (http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_modSel.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1759463670.1049264487@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccgadchmelhlfgcgfkceghdgngdglj.0)

Then click on portable, satelite brand, and your model. Looks like only 1 driver set though. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif Can e-mail/call them and ask if they have older versions archived. (The set they have is for Win XP, from 2002. (If your version is older, may try these too.)

[Gregoshi]

Hi yoko. You are in very good hands. Aelwyn and BvB have you covered. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif Thanks gentlemen.

[Gregoshi]

yoko posted elsewhere:

Thanks, for the info so farHere is some more info that relates to problem,

1 I am playing Spanish version (live in Spain)
2. yes it is a laptop
3. I can play battles as well as the tutorial for batles,
And the historical campaigns. What happens exactly is when I pick single player or campaign tutorials it starts to load you see the red bar filling then as soon as that is done a second red bar appears directly overtop fills quickly then puts me back to the menu where atthe bottom of my screen is flickering and unsteady I acn pick campaing tutorials agin with the same results but if i touch another option it kicks me out to the desktop, I have directx 9 and windows media palyer 9 bothe recently downloaded on the machine as well I have tried every known combo of resolution and colorbit combo I am downloading latest version of s-3 driver thaks for website but I do not know it it will change anything as well I ahve loaded Patch US/Eur.

[Swordsman]

Yoko,
I have EXACTLY the same symptoms you describe on my Gateway laptop. It also has a 16mb video card (ATI). I read somewhere (Apothecary I think-- but can't find it now) that it's probably the 16mb of memory on the video card that is causing this. For some reason it's not sufficient to load the campaign map. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pissed.gif

I too have tried driver updates, rollbacks, various resolutions, etc., to no effect. But maybe there is some other reason and a tech-wizard can help us out. I'm afraid, however, the only solution is upgrade the video memory.

Has anyone out there ever got a campaign to work on a LAPTOP with 16mb video memory?

[Gregoshi]

Swordsman, I'm sure a few people have 16mb cards and got the game to work. I know I did, but that was a desktop. And I know what you mean about a thread on this problem. I've searched both the EH and the Apothecary and can only find reports of the problem but none indicating success with fixing the problem. Replacing the graphics card may be the only solution - note may.

[Kraellin]

just as a guess here, i'd say you're not running into a driver problem so much as you are a resources problem, particularly with your video. i didnt see any mention of how much system ram you have either. laptops are generally not supported by game companies. and i believe your video card isnt directly supported either. ok, i see it now, 256 MB memory. that part shld be ok then. but your video ram and card are quite suspect.

what you can try to do, is trim your machine such that it is using as little resources in other things as possible, particularly video resources. i'm going this direction because you can run the battles, so it sounds like your drivers are ok. but, it also sounds like your machine is starving for more power. the campaign game is quite large. the campaign map alone is quite large. i suspect it's trying to load it and just going, 'help', and it gets no help and finally quits. and since it's an S3 savage card, i'm thinking it's also a pci type card or onboard video, and not agp.

look in the apothecary on helps for trimming your resources; things like turning off anti-aliasing, anti-virus, background tasks, agp aperture settings, pci texture settings, write combining and so on and so forth. there's quite a few tips in there for that sort of thing.

someone else mentioned that we've never found a definitive answer to the problem you're experiencing, and this is quite true, as far as i recall. so, i'd be interested in knowing if you get yours going and what you did to do so.

K.

[Kraellin]

ok, i just read your 2nd post on this subject, the one that was closed, and there was a tiny bit more information on what is going on there. that flickering at the bottom of the screen, tells me one of two things, drivers or vid card resources lacking. and since you can play battles i'm gonna guess your system is simply starved for video ram, so the best thing you can prolly do is get a better card with more video ram. other than that, try what i posted in the above post, but i wouldnt hold out for too much hope there. if i remember correctly, the campaign map is something like 25 or 30 megs all by itself. this is going to put a serious drain on your video ram. so, even if you manage to get it running with your current card, your virtual ram is going to be taxing your harddrive pretty hard.

K.

[Gregoshi]

Ah, the cavalry arrives. Thanks Krae. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Kraellin]

hehe, gregoshi,

i dont know about cavalry...more like wayward ashigaru, but thanks :)

i dont get in here as often as the apothecary, so i appreciate you moving those posts over to the dark side from time to time. frankly, we need more folks to break their computers; we're kinda bored over there and thinking about breaking the forums just to have something to fix ;)

K.

[Pywell]

here is a sugestion, make sure your display is set correctly, tboth the refresh value, and resolution, if using win xp, you may need to download a refresh program, to be able to overide xp's default refresh settings, if you need this program let me know, i have it, and it took a long while to find.

[Gregoshi]

Hello Pywell. Thanks for the suggestion. Are you speaking from experience on this matter?

[yoko366]

To all thanks for the advise, I have not given up yet but I have laoded it on another machine with more graphic memeory 32MB and now I know what I have been missing, Pywell please send me those refresh drivers you remarked on this is no longer about anything but pride and to show we can overcome this problem.

[Llywelyn ap Gruffydd]

I also have a question related to video cards. Is anyone else playing MTW with a 3DForce B-32 Plus? I know this is a pretty low end card, but the game keeps crashing out to the desktop at various times. Sometimes this happens in the strategy map, other times in the battles. I updated the drivers yesterday and that seemed to make matters worse, so I'm almost certain the culprit is the video card.

Anyway, in the mean time, I guess I'll load the old drivers for now.

Thanks in advance
Llywelyn

[Gregoshi]

Welcome to the Org Llywelyn, and also welcome to this meeting of Graphics Card Anonymous. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif I'm no hardware expert, but I've never heard of your graphics card before. Can you give us a little more information about your system? Also, what version of Windows and what version of DirectX do you have?

[Pywell]

Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ April 03 2003,23:19)]Hello Pywell. Thanks for the suggestion. Are you speaking from experience on this matter?
yea, took awhile to figure out, win xp automatically checks the refresh of your screen, and locks those setting, and they don't change even when you think you have (through properties-settings) i thought i was gonna have to give up my addiction to mtw

[Llywelyn ap Gruffydd]

Gregoshi

Windows 98, SE, all patches applied. DirectX 9 with the latest security patch from Microsoft.

AMD 800 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB HD (7200 RPM). The machine should be *plenty* to run the game. Anyway, my card is a generic NVidia Riva TNT. I believe it has 32MB on board. Like I said, it seemed to get worse after I installed the newest drivers, so I'm pretty sure it's the video card.

However, one interesting tidbit. I was playing with the settings in MTW and after I turned off the Autosave feature, the problem got a little better.

Llywelyn