Crash Problem in MTW

[Auxilia]

The game (and oh, what a game&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif ran fine for a few weeks, but has started to freeze during battles (the strategic maps work fine). The sound is like a record jumping. System info as follows; driver versions in brackets where known (most of this is copied from the DxDiag readout)

System Model: 7VR
BIOS: AMIINT - 10
Processor: AMD Athlon™ XP 2200+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1807MHz (5.1.2535.0)
Memory: 256MB RAM
Page File: 141MB used, 477MB available
Primary File System: NTFS
DirectX Version: DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0810)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.01.2600.0000 32bit Unicode
Sound: Avance AC97 Audio (5.10.0.3840)
Graphix Card: InVidia GeForce2 MX/MX400 (4.0.7.2)

All help appreciated

[Kraellin]

i dont know what you folks are doing to your poor machines. game works fine, but now it's freezing/crashing. whatever it is, stop doing that ;)

ok, that was a joke, but i stated it because we've seen several of these lately, and i'm really not sure what's causing it. the game isnt re-writing itself, so it shldnt be doing that. generally what i look for when something like this shows up is, what did i recently change on my system? did i change drivers? did some idiot desparate company manage to stick yet another popup or ad ware or spy ware on my machine? did i alter settings on something, even if it's not seemingly related to the game? was there a rather shakey shutdown at some point that has corrupted a windows file? did i install another game recently? are my fans still running in the case? what's the heat like on the cpu now? is there a lot of dust and dead rats on the motherboard? i think you get the idea.

basically, something has changed. this usually means that you've changed something or a program you installed did, or, you're having a hardware failure somewhere. harddrives go bad, and not necessarily all at once. cpu's can go bad from overheating or overclocking and overheating. cd drives can get dirty or fail. something has changed. the trick is to find out what.

for an easy attempt at a fix, try this: stick the game cd in the cd tray and when the menu pops up, hit the re-install option. this is a very nice feature CA put in. it will overwrite your files, but not any of your saved games or data type files. be aware, though, if you're running a mod of any kind, the mod data may go kablooie and you'll most likely have to re-install that too.

as for your sound, that avance ac97 is an onboard, extremely cheap sound card. it works, and that's about all i can say good about it. you can do a couple things to try and fix the sound with that card, adjust the sound hardware acceleration in dxdiag or adjust the sampling rate in control panel, sound. best would be to get a better card and stick it in a pci slot and turn off the onboard stuff.

now, this isnt necessarily related to your crashes, but i notice you're running a 2.2 gig processor and a very much older gf2 mx vid card. you didnt say what o/s you're running, but if it's xp, then you fall into what i call a 'generation gap' machine. old hardware, new software, or old software, new hardware, or older hardware, newer hardware, and older software, newer software. all of those can be a pain at times.

so, just for your info, and maybe related to your crashes or maybe not, drivers are the key to the above paragraph. sometimes the latest and greatest driver isnt really the right one for your particular setup and configuration of hardware and software. so, dont be afraid to go retro on drivers.

also, run dxdiag and all the tests there and see if anything comes up. check your heat monitors in bios or on the desktop if you have them. compare the results to what your manufacturer recommends. it shld state it somewhere in the motherboard manual or on a tech sheet that came with the processor.

K.

[Auxilia]

At the moment what I would like to 'do' is smash my PC to little bits - but fortunately you've given me plenty to do short of this I get on with it and report back.

Thanks for the advice.

[Auxilia]

Kraellin - apologies for the long silence. I thought I would give you an update.

Have reinstalled the game - no change. I see your point on the motherboard sound, so I thought I'd run the game with that disabled - again no dice.

Now I realised there's an error log with the game itself, here's what it threw up:

C:\Crusaders\frontend_globals.cpp(1067) : Error : No such file or directory(2)
C:\Crusaders\bmradar.cpp(270) : File Error : fopen(.\RadarMap\flattomountaininland02.map, wb) - No such file or directory(2)

(this incidentally is during the 'quick' battle, the one in the green valley).

I haven't tried driver-juggling yet

[Gregoshi]

I'm going to move this to the Apothecary now that Auxilia can post there.