Another Crash Report

**Follow** · 06-22-2007, 15:53

I wanted to add my crash experience to the rest, but mine have been slightly different (and probably more numerous).

For me, the game alternates between crashing and freezing. In vanilla, I would sometimes freeze on the campaign map for no apparent reason and at different times. These freezes would sometimes be recovered if I waited long enough, but sometimes they would just sit there forever. In battles, I would have the same type of freeze up, only without the possibility of recovery.

Now, in EB, my crash issue has become much more common, and the game never recovers from it at all. In vanilla, I would just freeze and have to reboot my computer, but EB makes it so that the game goes CTD instead. The other day, I had a battle that I crashed in fully 4 times before I autocalced it and took too many losses to be acceptable (especially with another 2 armies waiting to fight me just outside). I fought the battle a 5th time and I finally won it without a CTD (and also coincidentally forgot to turn on the script for that battle). I've also noticed that if I do CTD, I either can't load the game up again, or if I can, I'm destined for another crash anyway, so I might as well reboot. The reboot has to be cold. In fact, if I'm generally using my computer for other tasks, close them all out, and check to make sure they've cleared memory, then go into the game, I still usually end up with a crash. This was less true in vanilla than EB, but still occurred, with EB it's almost assured.

I'm running Windows 2000 Professional, which I've thought might have a bit to do with it. All unessential services are turned off. I have the most current service pack (SP4), but I do not have all of the windows updates (even the critical ones (please no lectures, I prefer not taking every trashy piece of half-baked software Macroshaft puts on their site, and generally know what I'm doing with my computer)). Are there any essential updates that the game needs in order to function properly?

System specs:
AMD 64 Athlon 3200+
1GB RAM
NVidia GeForce 7300 GS (256MB)

I'm also running the game from a SATA drive, and my device manager shows an unknown device in SCSI that I can't seem to get rid of. I have installed all of the drivers and the drive works properly with no other crashes anywhere else. I also have an ethernet device showing as an unknown device, but that one is my wireless that I haven't bothered/needed to install drivers for.

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**bovi** · 06-22-2007, 16:51

I have no experience with what you're saying here, so this is only guessing.

I also had 1 GB of memory until recently, and while it was certainly slow enough and swapped often, it didn't freeze. If you are running a service that needs a lot of memory in the background it will make the swap-of-near-death happen earlier, but according to you that's not the case. Does your hard drive do a lot when it freezes by any chance? Now that I upgraded to 3 GB ram EB is running very nicely indeed, you could consider buying some ram too. At the least you should run memtest to see how stable your current memory is.

I once had an XFX NVidia 7600GT which was utter crap stabilitywise, I had to run on an over-a-year-old driver to get RTW to work at all (I blame NVidia driver programmers, but XFX support sucks bigtime too). Have you tried a couple of different drivers? Also, are you having trouble with any other graphics-intensive games?

I have no idea what difference Win2000 makes, and certainly not which updates would be necessary. Does anyone else here use this OS and play EB with success?

As you have some of the same problems with vanilla too, you could take it up with support, but whoever is handling CA's products I don't know.

**Follow** · 06-23-2007, 16:19

Originally Posted by bovi

I have no experience with what you're saying here, so this is only guessing.

I also had 1 GB of memory until recently, and while it was certainly slow enough and swapped often, it didn't freeze. If you are running a service that needs a lot of memory in the background it will make the swap-of-near-death happen earlier, but according to you that's not the case. Does your hard drive do a lot when it freezes by any chance? Now that I upgraded to 3 GB ram EB is running very nicely indeed, you could consider buying some ram too. At the least you should run memtest to see how stable your current memory is.

I once had an XFX NVidia 7600GT which was utter crap stabilitywise, I had to run on an over-a-year-old driver to get RTW to work at all (I blame NVidia driver programmers, but XFX support sucks bigtime too). Have you tried a couple of different drivers? Also, are you having trouble with any other graphics-intensive games?

I have no idea what difference Win2000 makes, and certainly not which updates would be necessary. Does anyone else here use this OS and play EB with success?

As you have some of the same problems with vanilla too, you could take it up with support, but whoever is handling CA's products I don't know.

Thanks for the response. I meant to mention that I ran memtest for a few hours as well and came up clean, but with all of the other stuff I mentioned in the thread; I forgot. I've been on this forum a bit browsing the various recommendations, and trying them.

Unfortunately, this is the only graphics intensive application I run. Most of what I do on my computer is message boards/email/poker besides this. I also have Dawn of War (Dark Crusade) which I could get re-installed and run, but that's about the newest game I own. Do you think that would work? I remember a few graphical glitches with the game when I ran it, but no crashes. That was also before my most recent system upgrade.

As for hard drive activity, I can't give you a good answer. I don't think my hard drive is running while I'm playing or just before crashes, but it's very quiet and I hardly ever notice it running. I also never installed the hard drive indicator led, so that's no help either. I build my own box and get a little lazy when I'm putting it together. But my swap file shouldn't be causing a problem, I have 127 GB free and the speed of the SATA drive shouldn't be causing any lag, I'll see about increasing the allocation in windows.

Again, thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.

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**bovi** · 06-23-2007, 18:52

Unfortunately, this is the only graphics intensive application I run.... I also have Dawn of War (Dark Crusade)

It's not important, it was just a way to rule out your graphics card as the culprit (Dark Crusade is very good though, you might enjoy replaying it

). But you should try to experiment with drivers from different points in time, including the latest driver of course, or borrow a graphics card from a friend and see if it makes any difference. When you experiment with various driver versions and it refuses to install an older one, DriverCleaner is your friend. Google it, it's free.

As for hard drive activity, I can't give you a good answer... But my swap file shouldn't be causing a problem, I have 127 GB free

Oh well, my hard drive is quite audible

. But you misunderstand. The problem is not that of too little swap space, but rather the frequency of swapping. If Windows decides you have too little free physical memory left (tends to decide that all the time, unfortunately), it will push down some of your currently used memory to disk, usually the parts that have not been used for the longest time. If you get very high memory usage, it could start swapping parts you actually are using regularly (RTW stuff, for instance) and it will spend all its power juggling this back and forth, leaving little to advance the game. EB uses a lot more memory than vanilla RTW, but didn't make the game freeze on me, so I don't really think this is the case.

**Follow** · 06-23-2007, 20:25

It seems like the bottom line is RAM issues, and if that's the case, I'll just have to deal with the issue until I can get that upgraded.

Aren't others running EB/RTW with 1GB of RAM or less without these issues? Or have they just come to accept them as part of the game?

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**bovi** · 06-23-2007, 20:36

You missed my, er, bottom line: "EB uses a lot more memory than vanilla RTW, but didn't make the game freeze on me, so I don't really think this is the case." I was talking about when I had 1GB. I think you should take it up with support.

**Follow** · 06-23-2007, 23:32

Originally Posted by bovi

You missed my, er, bottom line: "EB uses a lot more memory than vanilla RTW, but didn't make the game freeze on me, so I don't really think this is the case." I was talking about when I had 1GB. I think you should take it up with support.

Just to update a little, I re-allocated my swap file to the maximum windows would allow and played the game once since (without a reboot). The game seemed to work without a problem, a few times here and there I got some short hangups which I haven't seen before (1 second or less freeze then back to normal), but aside from that, it worked without a problem.

I'll update here after a week or so of playing with the swap file at the new size. Thanks for your help Bovi, it definitely helped come up with some solutions I hadn't considered yet.

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