Sound Issues with MTW and XP

[Dyabedes of Aphrodisias]

That is pretty strange. You are close to your physical memory limit, maybe MTW is having trouble with paging? MTW's RAM requirements are pretty small by today's standards (wasn't it 128Mb?), but I would think it could handle paging properly. I guess another test would be to close down everything else before starting MTW, maybe it doesn't like other programs hogging the memory.

Interesting idea. The battles I reported as running perfectly fine were when I had nothing else running. When I opened my internet browser to post the results here, then the campaign battles messed up. I didn't pay attention to that correlation though. I'll do another test, play a battle with no other programs, then open the browser and try to play another battle. Hopefully that's exactly the problem.

[EDIT]First battle, new symptom. Battle played without error until just before the lines clashed, I paused to do something, and I couldn't un-pause it. I could move around, command, everything, but not play. After minimizing the game and restoring it, the pictures in my unit cards don't show up.

Something's quite amiss here. I think I need to uninstall the game completely and reinstall it on top of a defrag and the new drivers and after the old vanilla install was completely disposed of. Then it will be as clean an install as possible when I put on the Gold Patch. Then I'll run the game, with no other programs running, and see how it goes for a while. If I get the same issues then, then I completely give up. I will be dusting out the old rig I used before I got this laptop. I will play this game!

[drone]

I will play this game!

That's the spirit!

I think I have 2-3 older PCs stored away somewhere for playing ancient games. I can go back to Win 98SE if I have to. Not really sure what that says about me.

[Dyabedes of Aphrodisias]

That's the spirit!

I think I have 2-3 older PCs stored away somewhere for playing ancient games. I can go back to Win 98SE if I have to. Not really sure what that says about me.

Haha, that's awesome.

Anyway, after eradicating any trace of MTW ever having been on my computer, installing and patching from scratch, closing all other programs and setting the Audio Quality to 'Low' and unit sizes to 'Default' after experimenting with all audio qualities and unit sizes in a dozen battles, I haven't had a single error message. I even get the option to play the game when I insert the disc instead of the option to install.

So all that just for a corrupted install? Perhaps. I'll start a campaign and see what happens I suppose.

[drone]

Excellent. Hopefully it works and you won't have to do my last-resort suggestion, reinstalling XP. How long has it been since you did a full OS install on that PC?

[Dyabedes of Aphrodisias]

Excellent. Hopefully it works and you won't have to do my last-resort suggestion, reinstalling XP. How long has it been since you did a full OS install on that PC?

After playing a Viking campaign for a number of hours yesterday, I finally got the same errors during a battle, but as long as I pressed the space-bar I could play the battle, albeit slowly and aggravatingly. So I went to bed. I'll keep playing it and see what happens. Hopefully it's just a "You've been playing all day, get your butt to bed" kind of error and I just have to give it a rest after a while.

I've never done a full OS install on this PC. I bought it from Fry's like 5 years ago, plugged it in and here I am. Just did regular defrags and cleaned up crap taking up space now and then, but I've never done an OS install. I don't know what that entails; I wouldn't even know where to begin, or how to keep all of my stuff.

[drone]

You don't really want to do it, it's just a pain, but having a fresh install usually cleans up a lot of residuals. Sounds like you are just borderline on memory, and after a while you reach the threshold. So I guess it's save early, save often, and reboot every so often, but at least it works.

Other things to try: Go into the Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs, and check for extraneous programs you don't need or are OBE. Older Acrobat versions and stuff like that. Check the notification area of the taskbar, a lot of times little useless updater programs get installed and eat up a little memory. Maybe try CCleaner to cleanse the registry.

[Dyabedes of Aphrodisias]

You don't really want to do it, it's just a pain, but having a fresh install usually cleans up a lot of residuals. Sounds like you are just borderline on memory, and after a while you reach the threshold. So I guess it's save early, save often, and reboot every so often, but at least it works.

Other things to try: Go into the Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs, and check for extraneous programs you don't need or are OBE. Older Acrobat versions and stuff like that. Check the notification area of the taskbar, a lot of times little useless updater programs get installed and eat up a little memory. Maybe try CCleaner to cleanse the registry.

I went through Add/Remove Programs and couldn't find anything in particular to clean up. I dusted around as much as I knew how, deleting old documents and programs and such by myself in the hard disc. I'll try the CCleaner idea. Thanks for the ideas.

As an update, I played for hours last night to the completion of my Vikings campaign, and that one battle error remains the only one I had. So far so good. If the error stays around, that's fine, as long as it only shows its head once in a campaign ;-)