MTW problem

[Wingman]

I tried posting this in the Apothecary a little while back and got no response. I’m going to post my problem here in the hope that someone has experienced something similar.

Anyway, ever since I got MTW I have experienced regular crashes to my desktop. These crashes never occur from the game itself (battles and strategy map), only when I stick around in the menus for to long. This has prevented me from reading the faction descriptions and participating in Internet games. Have any of you had this problem?

[dgfred]

Ask for some help from Geezer57 ~;) , he really knows his computers :smart:

[Geezer57]

Ask for some help from Geezer57 ~;) , he really knows his computers :smart:
Thanks for the compliment, dgfred, I try to provide good info - but am not reluctant to say "I don't know" when out of my depth.

Back to Wingman's problem: I've never encountered this one myself, and it would really help to know more about the computer configuration. But it seems less likely to be graphics card related, since the crashes are occurring in the menus, rather than in the graphics-intensive portion of the game. Is the machine stable otherwise, when not playing M-TW?

[dgfred]

Thanks for the compliment, dgfred, I try to provide good info - but am not reluctant to say "I don't know" when out of my depth.

Back to Wingman's problem: I've never encountered this one myself, and it would really help to know more about the computer configuration. But it seems less likely to be graphics card related, since the crashes are occurring in the menus, rather than in the graphics-intensive portion of the game. Is the machine stable otherwise, when not playing M-TW?

Saying 'I don't know' when you don't is the height of intelligence! ~;)

[Emerald Wolf]

I've had a similar problem during the first couple of times after I install the game or a mod (or I jsut finally got VI yesterday so that one too). I traced it down to a problem with Norton Internet Security. It doesn't allow MTW to access the internet and when it does it's little pop up to request instructions, it's such a resource hog that it swamps the game and crashes it. If you have norton running shut down the firewall for 5 minutes, KEEP EVERYTHING ELSE ON!!!!. This should allow you to get further than the menus and for some reason during the main campaign map it won't crash form this. Just tell norton when it asks to always allo MTW to access the Internet.

[Wingman]

My PC specs are:

1.4 GHz Intel Celeron
256 MB of RAM
Radeon 7000 graphics card

Umm… I don’t know what else I could list.

MTW is not blocked by my firewall and the crashes occur even when I’m not online, but I could try shutting it off and see if that works.

[Geezer57]

My PC specs are:

1.4 GHz Intel Celeron
256 MB of RAM
Radeon 7000 graphics card

Umm… I don’t know what else I could list.

MTW is not blocked by my firewall and the crashes occur even when I’m not online, but I could try shutting it off and see if that works.

Wingman, other info that might help: the operating system (i.e.: Windows9x. 2k, XP Home, etc.) you are using, graphics driver version, DirectX version, which antivirus, firewall, and background utilities you're running, etc.

To isolate a problem like this, you should probably start with the basics: power your machine compltely down, and let it sit for a few minutes. Start it back up, but run no applications other than the game. If it still crashes, shut down the game, and do a thorough scandisk, followed by a defrag. Check WindowsUpdate (if you're running Windows) for any updates, etc. Take your original game CD's and reinstall the game to a different directory (instead of C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval try loading it to C:\Games\New_Medieval), patch it if needed, and try the new install to see if it still crashes.
If you're running WinXP, you can hit the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys simultaneously to bring up Task Manager - make sure Medieval is the only application running. There are also ways to use Task Manager to shut down unneeded processes, but it gets very detailed - so lets save it for later, if we need it.
Some things I recommend to any one running a Windows PC attached to the internet - for antispyware, download and install Ad-Aware SE Personal v1.06 at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/, Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4 at http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html, plus SpywareBlaster 3.4 at http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/downloads.html. Don't forget to grab the latest definitions file while you're at it. Use a good antivirus package - I'm using Symantec AV Corporate Edition, but then it's free to me from my employer. A good alternative is AVG at http://www.grisoft.com/doc/10/lng/us/tpl/tpl01?prd=soh&E1=AVG+7.0+SoHo+Edition&plt=win. I also advise using a non-Microsoft browser package - I'm using Mozilla Firefox v1.06, available at http://www.mozilla.org/, but there are other good ones (Opera, Netscape, etc.) out there. And for a personal firewall that doesn't cost anything, you can't beat ZoneAlarm: http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp

At any rate, that's enough for now. Post the additional info, if you like, and I'll take a look at it and see if any other suggestions come to mind. Good luck!