HELP

[Despot]

Hey everyone,
this is my first post, and it is a sad one http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
I am having a problem running MTW. The game starts up ok... I select New Campaign, difficulty, period, faction and then when it goes into the loading screen it freezes... These are my Specs:

Gigabyte 7VAX(VIA KT 400 AGP set)
AMD Athlon 2500 Barton 512 Cache
512MB DDR Ram
Western Digital 80GB 7200rpm
Samsung 52X24X52 (CDRW)
Chaintech Nvidia GeForce 4 440MX 64MB
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Windows 98 (NOT SE)

I have tried several earlier version of the drivers for the Video Card.... Also, I have tried an earlier version of Direct X (namely 8.1 for win 98).

I have tried playing the game patched and unpatched with same results.... I have reinststalled it several times.... Furthermore, the game worked just fine for a period of time before I started having problems with it.... I really hope you will be able to help me...I really love this game... Thanks

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I posted your problem in the Apothacary...I hope they can find a solution for you.

[Despot]

Thanks a lot.... I couldn't post it there my self cause of the restrictions... thanks again

[Sasaki Kojiro]

You're welcome...always glad to be of assistance.

[Despot]

I just messed with it a little more.... When I run the display test the game crashes and it creates a little log file that says:

MEDIEVAL_TW.EXE caused an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in module MEDIEVAL_TW.EXE at 01A7:004076DB
EAX=00000000 EBX=00000000 ECX=00000000 EDX=00000000 ESI=00000000
EDI=0000001C EBP=00000000 ESP=010DC734 EIP=004076DB FLG=00010246
CS=01A7 DS=01AF SS=01AF ES=01AF FS=39BF GS=0000
(null)
01A7:00700465 (0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000) MEDIEVAL_TW.EXE

I ran the test with 2 different VC drivers and Direct X 8.1 as well as 9.0 with same results.... sometimes when I get to the loading screen a series a vertical green lines appear at the top of the screen
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I'm sorry I can't help you myself, I know next to nothing about computers, but I added your update to the thread in the apothecary.

[Gregoshi]

Hello Depsot. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif I wish I were greeting you under better circumstances.

If it makes you feel any better, you are not alone. We've had a rash of similiar problems: it was running fine and then one day - boom - it stops working.

Thanks for the helping hands Shinano. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Kraellin]

diagonal green lines is a dead give-away. vid card drivers. also, i'm really beginning to hate gf4 mx 440's. lemme guess, it's pci card? and even if it isnt, i'm really coming to believe that is one crap card. i run myself and it's quite fussy. i've had to tweak windows, tweak vid card settings, turn off a bunch of stuff, and i still have a bit of problems now and then.

i'm currently beta testing another commercial game and one of the problems has been that vid card. the dev guys had to specifically handle that one card and only that one card. not sure what they actually did, but that's the only card in all our tests that caused any problems.

we've also seen quite a few of these cards come up in the apothecary with problems.

i just recently responded to another person who is having problems with that card. you might look in the apothecary for recommendations i made to him. his name is Olsac. just look for his post about half way down the first page.

you might also look on your motherboard's site or the nvidia site for bios patches to make things work better with that card.

dont be afraid to try older drivers either. some that seem to work for some are the 30.82's, 41.09's, and i use the 44.03's for my xp machine. all systems are a little different, so try as many as it takes.

also, if your card is an agp card, go into bios and set your agp aperture setting to half your vid card ram... in your case, 32 megs. if that causes even more problems, turn it up one notch to 64 megs and try again.

K.

[KukriKhan]

MEDIEVAL_TW.EXE caused an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION...

sounds pretty serious, but often means there's a copy-protect prob. I don't mean to imply any piracy issues here, but: did you previously download a 'cracked' MTW, decide you liked it, bought the disc, installed the program, then got the error?

The reason I ask is that during installation, MTW looks to your directories to see if any other versions of the game/program exist on your machine, especially in the Programs folder. If you have other versions there (in Programs), for example the Demo, or a cracked version, move those to another folder, re-install MTW & then see if you're 'clean'.

Your reported machine stats are more than adequate to run the game; vertical green lines usually indicate a vid driver issue. And I worry a bit about 'plain vanilla' W98 embracing DivX editions above 8.0.

But hey, I'm just the janitor around these parts http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif Our tech-guy, Kraellin will stop in soon (either here or in the Apothocary) to get you back on track.

edit: Oops, tripped on Kraelllin's shoelaces again

[Kraellin]

too late, kukri, i beat you by two seconds :)

K.

[KukriKhan]

*Kukri sweeps the floor*

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif