Crash Bug

[Deleted Scenes]

(I searched and didn't find any bugs that were quite the same)
Does anyone else have problems with the game crashing to the desktop when you are on the strategy board, or know how to fix it? I'm lucky to get more than 30 seconds of play in before it crashes, and sometimes it crashes immediately. I have to keep my fingers on ctrl and s, that's for sure.

I have tried lowering graphics options to minimum, restarting the computer, closing other programs... nothing seems to work. RAM is not the problem, it would seem.

[Heraclius]

I posted this over in the apothecary for you m8. kraellin should look at it soon. what kind of computer etc are you using? that info sometimes helps kraellin.

[RZST]

do you have viking invasion installed?

coz i had this problem when i had VI installed when i wanted to play MTW, i followed how to install MTW on a diff folder but when i tried to play Strategic map it kept crashing.

[Kraellin]

yup. need some specs.

1. operating system
2. directx version
3. video card
4. drivers for vid card
5. sound card
6. drivers for sound card
7. motherboard
8. exactly as possible, the sequence of events leading to the crash
9. exactly what happens in the crash
10. how much ram
11. resolution you're running the game in
12. anti-aliasing on or off
13. anistropic filtering on or off
14. game options being used...fog, smoke, huge armies, etc.
15. is your vid card onboard, agp, or pci
16. is your sound card onboard or pci

generally speaking, crashes are the result of mis-matches somewhere, often with drivers, or, in resource management, like irq's, memory allocation and so on.

there's lots of topics on ctd's; some in here, some in apothecary, and some older ones in the tech library.

K.

[Deleted Scenes]

1. operating system: XP (1.6 P4)

2. directx version: 9

3. video card: Nvidia Gforce 4 MX440

4. drivers for vid card: Latest

5. sound card: ?

6. drivers for sound card: ?

7. motherboard: ? (older version of P4)

8. exactly as possible, the sequence of events leading to the crash: I start MTW, load the save (it is not a corrupted save as I have tried several), and after loading the strategy board it will crash to the desktop in anywhere from immediately to a few minutes.

9. exactly what happens in the crash: the program stops running, as if I had terminated the task in task manager. No pop-up or error message explains it. It just goes right ot the desktop.

10. how much ram: 512 DDR

11. resolution you're running the game in: I have tried every resolution, it makes no difference. My desktop resolution is 1024 X 768, with 32 bit color.

12. anti-aliasing on or off: Off

13. anistropic filtering on or off: Off

14. game options being used...fog, smoke, huge armies, etc: All of these options are turned on, but I wouldn't think they would matter as it crashes only on the strategy board and never during battle.

15. is your vid card onboard, agp, or pci: PCI I think (I installed it)

16. is your sound card onboard or pci: Im guessing onboard (It came with the computer, installed)

Sorry about not seeing the previous posts... upon review of the search function, I see that it only searches one forum at a time, and I didn't change that option from the default Main Hall. And yes I do have VI installed. I installed MTW, then installed VI, then the latest VI patch.

[Kraellin]

thank you for the info. that does help.

now, after asking you for all that, this may sound stupid, but it may just be a game bug. go into the game and clear all of your building queues, new units, replenishing units, and buildings. this may just be the queue bug.

now, i see conflicting data in something you said, are you running mtw or vi? you said mtw one place but that you had vi installed.

and the reason i ask about mtw or vi is, is this crash something that just showed up when you installed vi and didnt exist in mtw? or, have you been running vi and it was working fine and suddenly this showed up? this gives us clues to help you. if you were running either mtw or vi and all was working fine and this thing just suddenly showed up, it may well just be the queue bug and it's an easy fix.

if you were running mtw and then installed vi and now it's not working, then most likely it's a driver or directx issue. and that could be a little more troublesome.

i also happen to know the gf4 mx 440 is a bit of a troublesome card at times. it seems to not work very well with xp machines, or at least tends to fight with xp machines a bit over resources. one fix is to start cutting off processes and services in xp and all extraneous, non-essential programs. for help on the services, go to www.blackviper.com . they have an excellent guide for cutting off unneeded services in xp. then go into the apothecary and look for the pinned topic on windows tweaking. lots of good stuff in there you can do to free up more resources. in the game, turn off fog, fauna, smoke, huge armies and drop your resolution a notch. that shld help also. oh, and test your video while yer in there.

K.

[Gregoshi]

Welcome Deleted Scenes. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif You came to the right place. You are in good hands with Krae.

[Deleted Scenes]

Thank you very much for the al the info. BTW I meant I am running VI (haven't had problems with it before). I think I found out what the problem is. Kind of. If i leave the mouse idle for a few seconds (around 5), the game crashes. What kind of bug is this?

[Kraellin]

is the mouse a usb mouse or ps/2? if it's usb, it could be the usb polling thing. i know some usb meece have had troubles. not sure if there's a patch for that or not. might try the microsoft knowlegde base or the manufacturer's site for more help.

it could also be an xp polling type program. understand that windows is an active program, all by itself. it loops. that is, it's constantly looking at itself and updating and checking things. other programs like Office and Norton Anti-Virus do the same thing. they dont just ever shut down completely, unless you force them to. that means, that when you're running a game, those things are still active in the background, polling. this polling means checking stuff, actively. and that can sometimes interfere with a resource intensive thing like a game and even crash the game. it's also why all the readme files say to turn these things off during installation. they can destablize a machine if too much is going on and crash the installation.

oddly enough, the other thing this could be is vid drivers. yeah, that sounds kind of goofy, i know, but i've seen oddball vid drivers drive an operating system completely nuts before. they can affect everything on the machine.

my best guess, with the data providing, is you've got a polling process of some kind demanding an interrupt every few seconds and thereby screwing up something else, like the mouse interrupt. look to turn off some unnecessary programs or services in xp.

K.

[Red Harvest]

Can you try another mouse? I had some wierd stuff happen when an MS mouse started to die (electronics in it were failing.) Took quite awhile to figure out what the cause was. That was on my older system. I put a regular Logitech (ball, not optical) in it and it cured the problem. The MS ball mice are pretty bad in my opinion and I've replaced all of mine. Part of the problem was their inferior roller design. The diameter of the rollers is about half that of Logitech's design. Also, the roller material seems to be more prone to pick up the waxy gunk layer. By comparison, my Logitech has *never* needed cleaning. I use two Logitech optical mice and one ball type now.

[Deleted Scenes]

It must have been a problem with the mouse, but after I restarted the computer everything started working fine again. Thanks for all your help, guys. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Kraellin]

you're welcome.

we're really going to have to start charging for these telepathic fixes, red harvest ;)

K.