Game Crashing to Desktop

[Nickisimo]

I just got Medieval Total War, and can't even play the game because it constantly crashes to the desktop. Every time the game is trying to load something(especially coming back from a battle to the strategy, happens every time). I'm running an Athlon 64 3400, 512 M RAM, GeForce 3 Ti200 128M, with Windows XP SP1 loaded on it. This is obviously very frustrating, and from what I've read it's happened to others, but I never found a solution to the problem. Any thoughts?

[soibean]

maybe there was an error when it was installing...
or you have other programs running that, with MTW, overload your RAM and it crashes

[Nickisimo]

No, the install went smoothly, and I even patched the game to 1.1. I'm got hardly anything running in the background, just a temperature monitor for my CPU and some background anti-virus stuff that takes up almost no RAM at all, so I have no idea why this is happening. Is there a problem with the patch?

[bretwalda]

No, the install went smoothly, and I even patched the game to 1.1. I'm got hardly anything running in the background, just a temperature monitor for my CPU and some background anti-virus stuff that takes up almost no RAM at all, so I have no idea why this is happening. Is there a problem with the patch?

Just guessing there are much better troubleshooting guys around here, but, still:

• did you update your sound and video drivers?
• is your refresh rate of monitor set correctly?
• can your monitor take the game's resolution at that refresh rate?
• do you have enough hard drive space?
• restarted your machine recently?
• try install the latest patch and Viking Invasion with the patch if you can...

Hope it helps!

[Nickisimo]

Just guessing there are much better troubleshooting guys around here, but, still:

• did you update your sound and video drivers?
• is your refresh rate of monitor set correctly?
• can your monitor take the game's resolution at that refresh rate?
• do you have enough hard drive space?
• restarted your machine recently?
• try install the latest patch and Viking Invasion with the patch if you can...

Hope it helps!

I just put this machine together and put Windows XP on it as of last Thursday...so I have the latest drivers for my SB Live and GeForce 3 Ti200...The monitor is set to refresh at 100Hz, I'm sure the monitor can take the game's resolution(1024x768 or even 800x600 since I've tried that too), I have 120G of HDD space, the machine is restarted at least daily, and I don't have Viking Invasion but I did update it to 1.1.

Like I said, the game doesn't crash when the campaign mode is up and running. Even the tutorials run perfectly. It's only when I either try and load a campaign game(red bar fills up and then the screen flickers and CTD-Crash to Desktop-) or anytime I try to leave a battlefield and go back to the campaign that it CTD's. Now, I can play it and simply auto-calc each battle, but the battles are really the exciting part of the game. The fact is that I shouldn't "have" to adjust anything within Windows just so this game will play, or have to tiptoe around things and only save at certain times(beginning of each year I guess). The fact is that this was not a very well made game in terms of bugs, and from what I understand these CTD bugs have and still exist within all of the Total War Games. This issue needs to be seriously addressed. My respect for Creative Assembly has dropped considerably. They've made a very good series of games that are innovative and enjoyable, but you just can't release broken software like this time and time again.

[mikkele]

I got the same kind of problems when I upgraded my Nvidia drivers to the latest version (v66.93). In my case the CTD would happen either when I loaded a game or when I tried to start a battle. It disappeared when I downgraded to an earlier version (in my case v43.45 but others may work as well).

[Nickisimo]

I got the same kind of problems when I upgraded my Nvidia drivers to the latest version (v66.93). In my case the CTD would happen either when I loaded a game or when I tried to start a battle. It disappeared when I downgraded to an earlier version (in my case v43.45 but others may work as well).

I'm sorry, but there is no way in hell I'm downgrading my video card driver to one from like 2 years ago and suffer the expense of having many other games and programs not work right just to play this. I do appreciate the advice though.

[blim]

I have exactly the same problem, i've tried the game on 3 different computers now and I get the same crashing to desktop everytime. It's getting very annoying now as all i want to do is play the game.

[Paladin888]

I am also having the same problem. Search the entire net and you'll hear from tonnes of people that share our problem, yet not a single solution has been presented. When trying to load a game sometimes it crashes and sometimes it doesn't. I try to run a battle, same thing.

MTW used to work but now it doesn't. I think either the newer nvidia drivers or directx versions are causing problems (it's the only that that has changed over time). Unfortunately Creative Assembly is not patching their game. Only those who haven't updated their machine for two years can play it.

I agree Nickisimo, I too am not going to impair all my other games by using old drivers. I love MTW, but truly Creative Assembly, get in gear.

[axel]

hi i am a noob in this but maybe this help http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...icID=153.topic its the total war forum

[axel]

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...opicID=3.topic trye this

[axel]

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...opicID=6.topic or this the fist replay is i think for rome total war but look maybe it helps , i hope this all will help if i find more i will post

[axel]

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...opicID=5.topic i find a nother usefull tool maybe

[axel]

http://activision.custhelp.com/cgi-b...i=&p_topview=1 look at this maybe this would help

[Paladin888]

It's the video drivers! If you're an Nvidia user goto http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html and grap an older driver. I'm using 56.64 and it works fine. I'm keeping two driver installs on my machine so I can switch between the two.

[axel]

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...opicID=7.topic last one

[Deus Ex]

I finally got it working.

I was pretty much unable to load the campaign/strategy map. It would show the progress bar and then crash to the desktop (as others here have described). I tried all the stuff listed in the forums and the support site (setting resolution down, updating drivers, no programs running, etc) - nothing worked.

Until yesterday, I read here, in this thread (way near the end I think) to ROLL BACK VIDEO DRIVERS.

I have Nvidia GeForce 2 - using the windows driver "rollback" function I returned to an earlier set of drivers (went from 66xx to 55xx or something). POOF - problem completely solved.

No problem now in transition to campaign mode any more. Now I can actually play the game (campaign mode that is)

Now I can understand some folks not wanting to do this because of other games and the impact - if it screws up EQ for me, I'll have to undo to it

--> but it is super easy to do using the Windows Rollback function (in the properties window for your graphics device there should be a tab for "driver" under that tab you can manage your device drivers and roll them back if need be)

I just wanted to thank the folks here who pointed this out - as well as to reinforce that this is a pretty simple fix if you are as frustrated as I was.

Cheers.

[axel]

hi buddy i am happy to see that it works and all the members who helpt thats what make this a good community

[kiwitt]

I reverted back to early nvidia drivers as well to solve this problem. However, I may find it a problem again when I upgrade my Video Card to a 256 Mb model (e.g. GF6800U) as I will need later drivers to make this work well.

[mfberg]

I have the new and old drivers on my desktop, I just switch between them if I need the newer drivers for a program. The old drivers work with MTW and RTW so I'm pretty safe with them right now.

mfberg

[sevengoals]

I've followed this thread with great interest as I also had this problem. I seem to have solved it just before I found this forum.
It was also my drivers but,
One thing I did notice was the overall improvement in general performance when I simply cleaned around the vents and vacuumed cleaned the cooling fan.
I reckon part of my problem could have been over heating during the resource intense battles...