Constanting crashing after playing once-through

[LifeStar]

Has anyone else encountered this? I had just finished playing the game straight through, beat the game. I wanted to play again, so I started up a new game with a new PC. However, the game has been constantly crashing after I've started.

 

While before it would be about an hour or so of play that I would have to save the game and get ready for a crash, now it's happening at the very start of the missions! First the audio begins to clip, the frame rate drops to 0, and my HD is churning! I don't understand, the first time through I didn't encounter all these problems, now I can barely get the game to work for 5 min before it bombs on me.

 

I've even tried to uninstall and reinstall the game last night, but that didn't work either! Help!

[adrich81]

Have you changed anything in your hardware setup since your last play through? Updated any drivers? It sounds like the sound bug - you could try forcing software acceleration, or even disabling sound entirely. That would give us a starting point.

 

Can you post back with your system specs?

[LifeStar]

My system specs are:

 

Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.00GHz

L2 On-board Cache : 512kB ECC synchronous ATC

 

System Mainboard : Intel Corporation D875PBZ

Front Side Bus Speed : 4x 200MHz (800MHz data rate)

Installed Memory : 1023MB

 

Video System: SyncMaster 173T/177T,SyncMaster Magic CX700T/CX710T

Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

 

Physical Storage Devices

CDRW: Lite-ON LTR-52327S

DVD : JLMS XJ-HD166S

 

Hard Disk (C:) : 160.0GB

 

Sound card: Creative SB Audigy

 

Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2

 

Adapter : Intel® PRO/1000 CT Network Connection

[LifeStar]

I've tried your suggestions, but the game stil bogs and crashes. It looks like it's a mixture of frame rates dropping primarily, which then affects the audio too. I just don't understand what changed to cause this to happen now. Any other ideas on how to diagnose this?

[adrich81]

This is strange - I don't see anything in there that I would class as problem hardware. Turning off eax on the sound might help. How computer savvy are you? I'd suggest updating to the latest driver for you soundcard and the latest Nvidia beta driver for your graphics. (If you don't know how, post back and I'll talk you through it).

[LifeStar]

Hmm... I'll give that a try. The more I look into this issue, it seems to be related to the frame rate problems people have mentioned.

[adrich81]

No - the frame rate dropping is the result of a problem (the frame rate itself can't cause a problem, it just indicates how the game is performing). Seeing as all your hardware is more than capable of running the game, unless you have a defective component , it's a driver issue. Get a copy of driver cleaner pro and the latest drivers update your system. (The majority of bugs with this game result from onboard sound, unsupported graphics cards and ATI cards.)

[themacman]

turn off EAX helps for allot of people.

[LifeStar]

What's driver cleaner pro? Where would I get that?

[adrich81]

You cna get it here. To use it, download and install the program, but don't run it. Next, download the driver you want to install (in your case I suggest going to the Nvidia drivers page and clicking the beta link to get the 71.84).

 

Step by step:

1. Uninstall your current driver.

2. Reboot into safemode. (Press F8 just after your machine finishes detecting the hard drives etc and you'll get a menu - timing is important there).

3. Cancel the option to have windows install a driver for you.

4. Open driver cleaner and run cab cleaner from the tools menu.

5. From the main driver cleaner screen, then select the Nvidia option and hit clean.

6. Reboot.

7. Cancel the message about installing a driver again, and run the installation file for the driver you've just downloaded.

[LifeStar]

I found a guide on one of the other forum topics that highlighted some possible solutions. One of them was to go and install the latest drivers for the video card.

 

I tried that on my Geforce card and right now the game is running smoothly for the most part. It still is exhibiting that 30 - 60 min bug crash that others have noted, but the extreme lag and 5 min crashes have not occurred. It seems that part of it is definitely with the video drivers. I hope Obsidian really comes out to improve the games stability.

[adrich81]

The problem isn't the nvidia drivers, I can assure you of that. The only problem drivers are 75.90, which stutter on Dantooine. Which graphics driver are you using? Do you have the latest sound driver installed? The majority of problems I've seen are related to soundcards.

[darkpark]

is there a rough list of what type or brands of soundcards that cause problems?

i too am experiencing the 60+ min crash to the desktop but it only happens when moving from one section to another (eg: getting off the ebon hawk or getting on)

[adrich81]

Yep - almost every onboard soundcard (haven't heard probelms with soundstorms actually).

[LifeStar]

It may have been the sound drivers, but after updating the video drivers I haven't had those stinkin' crashes like I did last week. There was something said about making sure on nvidia that I use the 1.4+ GL(or something graphic related) software too. Don't know if that makes much sense, but my game isn't crashing as before.