MTW/shogun crashes

[NinjaX]

First of all.... my specs

Amd athlon 2000+
gf2 GTS
256 mb SDram
directx 8.1
newest media player
detonator 40.something (ive tried a couple)

Both the games have always worked fine, but since i stopped playing counterstrike, and decided to install shogun again it just hasnt worked.

When in battles it just crashes to windows, or it freezes in the infamous bluescreen of death.

I formatted my pc a couple of hours ago.. but still no luck.

Please can some1 help me?

(moving this thread to the technical help section would be great too)

[NinjaX]

Sorry i forgot to mention that sometimes i can play a battle, but usually it just freezes after 2-3 minutes of playing, sometimes after 5 seconds.

[NinjaX]

my cpu temperature is 64 celcius :S
This is quite high, but i didnt have any problems with counterstrike/quake3 etc so I dont understand :/

[Lord Of Storms]

Ninja X Welcome to the Org I have copied your original post over to the Apothecary. I am sure you will get a response soon. Good Luck . LOS

[Gregoshi]

Thanks for copying this topic LoS.

[Brutal DLX]

It could be the CPU temp. I had similar problems until I bought a new fan. You might also try to add a system fan, if you don't have one already.
You could check if it's the temp. by opening the tower case, that will drop the temperature by quite a bit, then try playing STW.

[NinjaX]

I already have my tower case open http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Kraellin]

what motherboard are you using?

does your motherboard require via 4in1 drivers and are they installed if so?

what o/s are you using?

what is a gf2 GTS? (i know the gf2 part, but what is 'GTS'?)

what sound card are you using?

have you read the tweaking thread in the apothecary and done any of it?

K.

[Red Harvest]

GTS is one of the GF2's with DDR memory, slightly faster version is the Pro, then the Ultra. GTS had good speed in 16 bit, not so good at 32 bit, typical GF2 texture blur and color contrast problems compared to the Radeon ViVo I had back when I tried both.

64 C is too hot. You shouldn't see temps that hot unless you are running an ASUS board, and are using CPU Burn in high priority mode for 15 minutes. (CPU Burn will push temps 5+ C hotter than any benchmark, math tester, etc.) ASUS boards indicate high (but also seem to be a bit higher temp than other boards--just not as hot as indicated.) Don't know what kind of heatsink or fan you have, but it sounds as if it isn't getting the job done. I had problems with my XP2100 on my ASUS A7V266-E. The room gets hot after playing for hours, this results in a hot case (even well ventilated), and with the ASUS I saw some stability issues at about 67 C. This happened despite running a Thermalright SK-6 with Delta 7000 rpm screamer. Solution: I picked up an XP2400 266FSB for $83 delivered. It runs about 11 C cooler at full load. It overclocks to XP2600 speed without voltage changes. The XP2100 runs fine in my older, non-ASUS motherboard so this was a cheap dual upgrade.

If you still have trouble after fixing the temperature problems with either a better cooler or better processor, then next probable causes are 1. Memory. 2. Power Supply. Rules of thumb on PSU are that +3.3 V should not dip below about 3.16 V (even that is too much in my experience), +5 V should stay above 4.75, +12V should be above 11.6 V. If you run CPU Burn and other torture tests with Motherboard Monitor logging in the background and see min. readings this low, or lower, then you need to invest in a better PSU. Hint: 99% of PSU's on the market are over rated and provide very poor voltage regulation. After having trouble with Enermax, Antec, and HEC units ranging from 400 to 525 W I finally spent the money for a PC Power and Cooling 425 W--perfect power regulation.

Memory errors are the toughest to track down. None of the memory testers I've tried can spot marginal memory. Memory errors can seem utterly random and non-repeatable, or at times they can be very repeatable. Best I can recommend is to borrow a known good stick from another PC.

[NinjaX]

mobo : ecs k7s5a
sound : sb audigy
gf2 gts was just a faster gf2 with ddr ram i think.
win2k prof

[NinjaX]

turned sound accel off in directxdiag
updated my sound drivers to newest version
put mem texture to 128 in my bios.

still it crashes.


I can play other 3d games like medal of honour, quake3 for hours with no problems :/

[Kraellin]

like red peasant, that temperature concerns me. that's a bit high and could be giving problems. i'd definitely try and bring that down.

but, since you say you could play other games without the crashes, let's take a look.

ok, first thing, go back into bios and turn your agp aperture setting back down. this setting shld be roughly half of whatever your vid card memory is. so, if your gf2 gts is 64 megs, then set the agp aperture to 32. by going to 128 you prolly went backwards.

turn off as much background stuff as you can, particularly active anti-virus stuff. this stuff can kill a game quicker than a T3 user in wolfenstein can shoot you dead.

i know the readme files all say use latest drivers, but we've found this isnt always true or the best. try some of the older ones as well. the 30.82's were pretty stable and might be more compatible with that generation of card. i'm afraid with drivers it isnt always 'one size fits all'. sometimes you have to try on many to find the one that fits best.

but again, get that heat down. that can be a real killer all by itself.

K.

[NinjaX]

the heat is a concern, but it cant be the problem of shogun crashing becouse otherwise other (more intense) games like q3, moh, tribes2 would crash.

[NinjaX]

**** Stop: 0x0000007f (0x0000000D, 0x0000000, 0x0000000, 0x0000000)
UNEXOECTED_KERNAL_MODE_TRAP

thats the error i get :S

[NinjaX]

http://www.mdacomputers.com/bsod_2_files/bs7.gif

[Kraellin]

Quote[/b] (NinjaX @ June 25 2003,07:07)]the heat is a concern, but it cant be the problem of shogun crashing becouse otherwise other (more intense) games like q3, moh, tribes2 would crash.
sorry, but mtw puts all these games to shame as far as processing cycles. mtw is a hog. 25,000 men on the field and all being tracked individually as well as unit tracking. that's FAR more intense than a quake type game, even with them running in high res.

and your error trap message pretty much confirms what we've been saying about heat. when you heat up a semi-conductor too far, it takes on the some of the properties of a full conductor and bad things start to happen. so, that's where you need to look first. get that heat down. even if you just put an external room fan on it or something till you can get something better internally, get it down and see if that doesnt make a difference.

K.

[NinjaX]

Quote[/b] (Kraellin @ June 25 2003,08:45)]
Quote[/b] (NinjaX @ June 25 2003,07:07)]the heat is a concern, but it cant be the problem of shogun crashing becouse otherwise other (more intense) games like q3, moh, tribes2 would crash.
sorry, but mtw puts all these games to shame as far as processing cycles. mtw is a hog. 25,000 men on the field and all being tracked individually as well as unit tracking. that's FAR more intense than a quake type game, even with them running in high res.

and your error trap message pretty much confirms what we've been saying about heat. when you heat up a semi-conductor too far, it takes on the some of the properties of a full conductor and bad things start to happen. so, that's where you need to look first. get that heat down. even if you just put an external room fan on it or something till you can get something better internally, get it down and see if that doesnt make a difference.

K.

Quote[/b] ]sorry, but mtw puts all these games to shame as far as processing cycles. mtw is a hog. 25,000 men on the field and all being tracked individually as well as unit tracking. that's FAR more intense than a quake type game, even with them running in high res.

lol, ive only tried the mtw demo, wich crashes even in the first tutorial.

Shogun crashes when it feels like it, even in small 100vs100 battles sometimes.

Please tell me a game demo wich i could install wich is more intense than shogun/mtw demo so i can test it.

Btw, i just read that 55- 65 is quite normal on some athlon cpu's, ive never had trouble with any other games, so im not gonna buy a new 30$ cooler just on the off chance that it will fix my problem.

[NinjaX]

I just bought starcraft+broodwar and i am having exactly the same problem with it aswell, it just crashes as soon as i get into the game (the rts bit not the menu)

[NinjaX]

ok ive changed video card to a TNT2
i took out and uninstalled my audigy SB
downloaded and installed the win2k service pack
tried different detonators.

And still... shogun and starcraft lock up after +- 2 min.

[Drucius]

I've got exactly the same mobo and had exactly the same problem. I cured it by opening the case, which lowered the running temp of my XP2000 by around 12 degrees (from 64 degrees when running MTW and MOHAA). It hasn't crashed once since. 64 degrees, although within parameters, is way too high.



Hello everybody, btw.

[Portuguese Rebel]

Hmmm AMD chipsets... GOT to love those...

[Gregoshi]

Welcome aboard Drucius - though these boards aren't quite as hot as your board was. Can I safely assume that the temps we are talking about are celsius and not fahrenheit?

[Drucius]

Cheers Gregoshi,

Yes the temps are celsius, the problem was that the heat generated by my Gforce3 would rise up to the CPU and wasn't getting dissapated, raising the CPU temp to insane levels. As a temporary measure, I removed one of the panels on my case, although I should really go and get a case fan (they're only a tenner, after all).