Crash to desktop in battles

[Jarko]

I use MTW with VI and latest patch.
Simply when playing a battle after random amount of time the game crashes without any error messages to desktop (afer 10-20s). I tried changing game options but it didn't help much -it looks like I can play a bit longer (about 1min.).

What I tried:
1) reinstalling
2) defragmenting
3) changed graphic card (previously Nvidia GeForce 2 TI, now RAdeon 64MB DDR VIVO)
4) chaning aperture size in BIOS (32-256)
5) chaning desktop resolution (helped a bit - battles lasted 2 min.)
6) setting compatibility options to w98,w2000
7) uninstalling directx 9.0b (some freeware tools) and running game on DX8.1
8) installed latest drivers for bios, chipset, graphic card, sound card

The game never worked properly on this machine. It works on my old PII400 but frame rate when playing with sound is very poor and any battle loads for 2 min.

Here are my specs:


Motherboard: ABIT KR7A-133
Cpu type: Athlon XP 1800+
video card: Radeon DDR 64MB VIVO
sound card: SoundBlaster Live 5.1
ram: 512MB DDR
monitor: Compaq V70
router/modem/satellite: ADSL Modem
firewall/proxy (hardware type): none

operating system: WinXP
directx version:9.0b
vid card driver version: 6.14.0010.6404
sound card driver version: 5.12.0001.0252
which Total War game: MTW+VI+2.02 patch
anti-virus software: ETRUST
firewall/proxy (software type): WinXP


screen resolution i play in: 1024x768
screen resolution on desktop: 1024x768
color bit setting on desktop: 32b
smoke and fauna on/off? : ON/ON
unit size in game: HUGE
agp aperture setting (game): 16
pyrotechic setting (game) : 100

did you run dxdiag? : yes, All OK
i am running these tasks in the background: nothing special - standard XP setup


i have ANY microsoft office product in my systray (the stuff in the lower right of the desktop): none

i've defragged my system within the last (hour, day, week, month): week

i installed a new directx version and now (whatever) isnt working: it never worked even with 8.1

Please help

[Jarko]

Additional info:

- tried without sound - even disabled in OS. Didn't help

I wonder what the reason might be that on older machine it works. It's winXP there too, DirectX 9.0b and nvidia which was before in new machine. Mainboard+chipset, CPU, sound card, memory.

[Jarko]

More info:

Game has two error logs.

error.log:

Errors for session started: Fri Jan 09 20:14:44 2004

C:\Crusaders\bmradar.cpp(270) : File Error : fopen(.\RadarMap\hastings.map, wb) - No such file or directory(2)
Errors for session started: Sun Jan 11 20:07:25 2004

C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\frontend_base.cpp(850) : DirectX call : E_NOINTERFACE (???)

crash.txt:

Medieval_TW.exe caused an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in module Medieval_TW.exe at 001B:004777F5
EAX=00050000 EBX=007894C4 ECX=0B01AF78 EDX=0013BA44 ESI=0B01AF78
EDI=0B01AF8C EBP=80808080 ESP=0013BA04 EIP=004777F5 FLG=00010206
CS=001B DS=0023 SS=0023 ES=0023 FS=0038 GS=0000
001B:004777F5 (0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000) Medieval_TW.exe

[cromwell]

I have a similiar problem as you. I too have win XP pro, with 512 DDR ram, GFti4200, and I get crashes to the desktop as well. They are always directx calls, with something to do with graphics. I'm running 9b Directx as well, and the dxdiag shows all to be ok. It crashes on me about one third of the time I'm online playing. usually a great battle is unfolding online and boom i'm on the desktop. If you figure anything out post it and I'll do the same. So far I have just been living with it.

Cromwell

[Jarko]

Update:

Today i installed XP clean, not even SP1, using DX8.1 and all the drivers coming with XP. Then I installed the game, loaded first historical battle and....
CRASH after 15s of battle.
I start thinking it's hardware configuration, BIOS maybe. I read somewhere that MTW may have problems with memory over 512MB DDR. But I have just exactly 512MB DDR. Maybe that is too much as well. Shall I try removing one slot? We will see....

[Lord Rom]

I use winxp home and vi with 512 ddr. I use the integrated video with32 mb. I use the direct x drivers that came with vi. Have installed all the nasty service packs from microsoft also. No crashes.

[Lord Rom]

Just a thought...saw something similar in apocethary. Had to do with xp being a resource hog. Guy found site that showed all the programs that could be turned off in background and fixed his prob. Hope it helps
Rom

[Jarko]

UPDATE:

Success Eventually I pulled out one 256MB chip of my DDR RAM out and started the game. No crashes I managed to finish the game on full settings in the game (1024x768, medium sound (high gets stupid cracks), fauna/flora on, units huge etc.

Tried several times. With both chips in, crash happened 5-20s after starting battle. Sometimes it even caused restart of system.
Without one chip game works perfectly. I tried so far only two battles (Banockburn and Hastings) but will write again if something else happens.

Hey you techinical guys out there. What's the matter with a program not handling properly 512MB of DDR RAM? What could be the reason. Any ideas how to fix this? Any BIOS setting? I tried fault safe settings though and game still crashed with 512MB.

Anyway I am happy it works now. Maybe you could try the same solution Cromwell?

[Jarko]

UPDATE:

I tried to insert chips in different order - game crashes.
Tried to play on any single memory chip - no crashes.

It looks like memory chips are OK but somehow not handled properly in MTW.

[Gregoshi]

That memory thing is not encouraging news Jarko. There must be something else tied to the memory that is causing the problem or almost everyone would be having the problem. Good work though. I'll get Krae to have a look at your problem.

[Gregoshi]

Actually, Junior Patrons can now reply to topics in the Apothecary Jarko, so I'm just going to move this thread over there.