Medieval Total War CTDs and Solutions

[caravel]

It sounds like you still might need older drivers.

Good luck with Rome, you'll probably find that that will run ok on your system.

[AmbrosiusAurelianus]

I also have a NVidia GEForce 8300 and have the same problem of being unable to give move commands to units. Enemy units are also visible through the terrain and city walls.

I would appreciate any help with this.

[caravel]

Unfortunately I don't know of any solution for the Nvidia 8xxx series cards as yet. You may want to try the anti aliasing fix mentioned earlier in this thread. MTW almost always does better with older graphics card drivers, but for the latest series of cards, older drivers from e.g. 2004 are clearly not an option.

I can only suggest that you try all of the settings that you can find that are related to backwards compatibility with older games.

[Zarax]

Got Vista and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, latest drivers by Windows Update...
Tried all solutions posted here but so far no luck into running a campaign...

[AmbrosiusAurelianus]

Anti-aliasing fix does nothing for me. Sucks!

[caravel]

Got Vista and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, latest drivers by Windows Update...
Tried all solutions posted here but so far no luck into running a campaign...

Under Windows XP the 9800 series need the catalyst v5.7 or older. If you use newer drivers the game will keep crashing, with the latest drivers it will CTD at the campaign map. Personally I use the Omega drivers based on catalyst v4.8 and find those to be the best for STW and MTW and the 9800 Pro. The game will still always lock up on exit requiring you to ctrl+alt+del, but it does run stable (if anyone knows a fix for that I'd like to hear it). The real problem is of course that you have Vista and not XP. Try the oldest drivers you can get hold of and good luck. I'm not sure if you can force the XP drivers or not, I have heard of people manually installing XP network card drivers on Vista but I'm not sure about graphics cards or ATI in particular.

[Tyler]

Ok i just bought a new laptop computer for college and the other day i decided that i would get out my old Medieval Total war and play it. This computer happens to be vista. It installed and every thing just fine..i even played one of the historical battles and it worked great..but then i went to go start a campaign and while it was going to the campaign map it just shut down to the desktop and said that MTW had stopped working..i have tried this many times since an i still can get it to work..does anyone know someway to get the campaigns to run?

[caravel]

See your other thread: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=94652

[phowa]

erm i got a nvidia 6100 and im trying to do that second solution but when i click proerties settings advanced and my gfx card on the left i dont see a box for setting and quality =/

[edyzmedieval]

DELL XPS M1710
Windows Vista Business
nVIDIA GeForce Go 7900GS 256MB
4GB of RAM

=> MTW will go up to the presentation, and then CTD saying MTW has stopped working.

Any possible help?

[caravel]

@phowa: Not sure as I don't use Nvidia cards at home. If the settings aren't there are you sure you have the correct drivers installed? Perhaps you have only the driver that came with your OS?

@edyzmedieval: If the 2x AA or higher fix won't work then I'm not sure what will sorry. Your biggest problem is that Vista doesn't have older drivers that may fix the problem so you're not even going to have the option of trying that.

[mitza64]

I had the same problem, when starting a new campaign, mtw crashed to desktop and i tried the AA fix, but not the older drivers fix. It didn't work. I solved the problem by switching game resolution to 1280x960 (which is my desktop resolution too) AND by running the game in Win 2000 compatibility mode. I don't know if one of these things fixed the problem or both of them but since it works i won't temper with it! :)

I have a NVIDIA 8600 gt glh 256 mB, Win xp SP2 Build 2600, Nvidia drivers 163.71, and medieval total war vikings expansion, version 2.1.

I hope this will help others too!

[caravel]

Welcome mitza64

That's a good point about desktop resolution. I hadn't found that to be of much use to anyone of late so I'd forgotten about it. MTW seems to run in 16 bit colour, so it is a very good idea to set your desktop to the same resolution and colour depth as the game, and also keep the battlemap and campaign map resolutions exactly the same. This did used to help me running the game in the past on the 9000 where I would get the odd CTD when changing to a battle, going back to the campaign map or loading a campaign. These were rare but disappeared once I'd set the desktop resolution the same as the game. If it's crashing at a particular res then try testing with your desktop and the game at 1024*768*16 bits.

Are those the latest drivers you're using and have you tried testing with and without the win2k compatibility mode yet?

Thanks

Caravel

[mitza64]

It works fine even without win2k compatibility mode, my desktop resolution is set to 1280x960x32bits. I forgot to mention in the previous post that i also set it to run Maximized and i turned off advanced text services for mtw.

The latest Nvidia drivers are 163.75. I will update soon and i will tell you how it works. :D

I will try different settings to see what actually solved this, but i don't have enough time at the moment. Maybe in the week-end! :)

[bamff]

Here's the new problem (gggrrrrrr) when i enter the battle screen, i can select units group etc. but i cannot give the units any orders on the map itself. The move/attack cursor never appears. So now i can play on the campaign map but cannot play any battles. I can send them to another point using the minimap. (I even won a very simple siege that way) but in the main battle map the cursor never changes.

The folks at nvidia advised me to download and install a 169.04 driver to fix this....it did allow me to move troops, BUT only by selecting the troop icon from the foot of the screen - I still cannot select the units themselves....oh, and trees became large yellow rectangular shapes....

My system sounds very similar to yours GamblerTuba, so please advise if you find a way through the problem!

[bamff]

The latest Nvidia drivers are 163.75. I will update soon and i will tell you how it works. :D

I had thought so too from my scanning of the website, but the nvidia support folks put me on to the 169.04 driver that I referred to above. It is a beta driver that was apparently released on 30 October 2007, so I gather it is still undergoing some testing, which explains the "patchy" result that I got....

[Costy750]

First post (of many if I can get this damned game to work), so HI!

OK, first off, my system is pretty old, and I played MTW and VI back in the day. I've just got Gold edition and tried installing it on my dad's new vista PC but the AA fix doesn't work for me. I've come back to this machine, and managed to circumnavigate the registry errors that come with having previous versions installed.

BUT every time I launch the game, either direct from the disc or from the desktop I hear the opening noise (as the TOTAL WAR logo launches) but see nothing but black. It then goes silent, stays black and remains like that until I close the program from the task manager (it is by this time "Not Responding").

This is doing my nut in. I can play Rome on this system and even games as recent as PES6 (albeit on a low setting). I never had these problems before.

Should I try messing around with the resolution before I launch the game? Try deleting the credits files?

Any help would be greeted with grovelling worship.

[caravel]

Please read this thread and look at the posts relating to the insertion of the "skipcredits.txt" file. Try to run the game after inserting the file and see if there is any difference.

[Hero63]

hello.
i'm new to this game and i need your
the game crash everytime i enter the campiagn just before he show the battle map.

i also have some Q

1. what is CTD?

2. What is 2X AA fix?

i have P3
512 ram
Geforce2 Mx/Mx 400
RES: 800:600
16bit color

really need your help cause im dying to play the game

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Welcome to the .Org Hero63
A CTD stands for Crash to Desktop - basically when the game randomly closes down when it shouldn't.

The AA 2x fix involves forcing anti-antilizing, a graphics card feature which reduces jagged edges, to the level 2x. For some inexplicable reason this resolves problems with newer graphics cards (Geforce 6 and above) and their drivers.

Since you are running an older Nvidia Geforce card (as in below Geforce 5 FX), the AA 2x fix is not required. You quite simply need to follow the first section described in this post:

1- Download Nvidia ForceWare v61.76 (Windows XP/2000 version. Browse to Nvidia.com for other OS versions). Do not install yet.
2- Uninstall your current gfx drivers from Add/Remove Program through your Control Panel which can be accessed through Start button of your Windows.
3- Get Driver Cleaner Professional and install it. The download link is a bit down the page. (Program also has a commercial version called Platinum which promises to have been better optimized, but this free version will do the trick for us)
4- Restart your computer and when your PC is about to load windows press F8 button to bring up loading options of Windows. Choose Safe Mode, hit enter and let it load windows that way.
5- When Safe Mode is loaded, it may give you a warning saying what this Safe Mode is all about. Just click right away to get it fully open.
6- Now run Driver Cleaner Professional. Since this is the Safe Mode where there are no visual supports, hence screen resolution is low, you may not be able to find the shorcut on your desktop. In that case you may try browsing your Program Files folder and find Driver Cleaner there and run its .exe from that location.
7- Now that you have Driver Cleaner Pro run, you must select Nvidia from Cleaning Selection dropdown menu.
8- Click Start and let it do the job. When it is finished you'll see Cleaning Finished! message at the bottom of the program window.
9- It's time to restart your PC after all thorough cleaning, so be it.
10- When you are normally logged into Wndows, it may say New Hardware Found blah blah, just click cancel and install old version drivers which were already downloaded. It will ask for another restart, and when that is done, you're done with downgrading your driver set peacefully.

Good luck Hero63

[Dutch_guy]

hello.
i'm new to this game and i need your
the game crash everytime i enter the campiagn just before he show the battle map.

i also have some Q

1. what is CTD?

2. What is 2X AA fix?

i have P3
512 ram
Geforce2 Mx/Mx 400
RES: 800:600
16bit color

really need your help cause im dying to play the game

Basically follow Omanes' suggestions, they're spot on. However, rest assured, your vid. card (even though it's way outdated) will run the game fine. I know this because that's the card I had when I played the game, and before upgrading to another (better) card.

For me, however, putting AA to 2x did the trick.

[Hero63]

Tnx for helpin me out
the game work fine

[neeja]

Howdy

I've been having the same exact problems as the guy above. It appears as if our computers are the same, except for my graphics card being a MX 440. But when i tried the fix above, I was stuck at 'Driver Cleaner". I could not find the free Down Load Anywhere on the site. it all wanted me to buy the software.

Where is the free down load?

Thanks!

-Neeja

[caravel]

Download it from here and click on the download location you want (either Europe or America are available) then scroll to the bottom of the agreement and accept it. After that it will download. When downloaded, go to add remove programs and remove the Nvidia drivers from there, when it asks you to reboot don't, then run the DCP setup file to install it and after this run DCP and clean all Nvidia drivers. Now make sure you've already downloaded the replacement driver and reboot. If you've done it correctly you may (or may not) end up with a flickery screen in too low a resolution - anyway you may see some difference and more importantly you will also see the "new hardware found" wizard popping up which should prompt you for a driver or install the Microsoft provided driver automatically. If it does install the M$ driver you should reboot when it asks you or if it doesn't and instead prompts you for a driver, just cancel it and either way run the Nvidia setup file for the replacement drivers, when installed reboot again. In the driver control panel options use a global setting of 2x AA, set your desktop to 16 bit colour mode, cross your fingers, pray and test the game.

Good luck.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

So...a problem I have!

Medieval CTDs as soon as I finish loading the strategy map. I just installed it, so this is on starting a new campaign.

If I Disable the AGP Texture Acceleration, then it works again. Yay!

But, then I install BKB Supermod. Now it no longer works. Same problem as before: CTD on loading the strategy map on both Super Eras and the vanilla Eras.

Any idea why this is? What's Supermod change that could revert any dxdiag changes?

[ThePainkiller]

I have spent the last four days trying to get my MTW 1.01 to work on my laptop. Finally, I got it. If anyone has Intell chipsets...try going back and installing the older drivers. I installed the one I had from the first day I recieved my laptop, it finally worked. Intel Chipsets = Old Drivers

[caravel]

So...a problem I have!

Medieval CTDs as soon as I finish loading the strategy map. I just installed it, so this is on starting a new campaign.

If I Disable the AGP Texture Acceleration, then it works again. Yay!

That does seem to work for some systems. What graphics card do you have?

But, then I install BKB Supermod. Now it no longer works. Same problem as before: CTD on loading the strategy map on both Super Eras and the vanilla Eras.

Any idea why this is? What's Supermod change that could revert any dxdiag changes?

It's a CTD but not the same CTD, something has probably gotten corrupted. Try redownloading the mod and reinstalling it. First uninstall MTW and do a clean install of it. If you did install BKBSM over an already modded game then that's why it's crashing.

I have spent the last four days trying to get my MTW 1.01 to work on my laptop. Finally, I got it. If anyone has Intell chipsets...try going back and installing the older drivers. I installed the one I had from the first day I recieved my laptop, it finally worked. Intel Chipsets = Old Drivers

You would have saved yourself four days if you'd read this sticky thread in it's entirety, where using older drivers for Intel Integrated graphics is already covered.

[Revenant]

Hello!

I just bought a new computer and MTW suddenly stops working for me...

The problem is the same as with others here: CTD just after campaign map is loaded and before it appears.

I have:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @2.66GHz

4Gb RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with latest drivers


I tried probably all proposed solutions:

changed resolution to 800 x 600 / 16 (changed desktop resolution too)
switched AA to 2x
disabled AGP texture acceleration

but the problem remained:(

[caravel]

You've tried pretty much everything suggested in the thread. The only thing I can suggest is that you try 1024*786 resolution for desktop/campaigns/battles and see if that makes any difference. Also try 32 bit colour on the desktop. Keep the 2x AA forced also.

[Romf]

Is it possible to disable the AGP texture acceleration some other way because under the dxdiag there is no disable button next to it for me?