CTD Woes

[Kurt Lange]

Just reregistered after a loooooooooooong time away ( so long I cant even remember what my log on was ) in the hope of some advice.

Just had the game crash in Patrol 15 of the WaW3 campaign. The screen goes black, the sounds persist for about 30 seconds, and then I'm dumped back to the desktop, only its in 800 X 600 resolution, and the colours are all corrupted. I get back to normal resolution ( 1152 X 864 ) by rebooting.

Had this happened three times now, each time while submerged and with enemy ships in sound and periscope contact. Updated the graphics driver, but it didn't stop the third crash happening.

XP
P4 3.2 Mhz
Nvidia 6600 256 Mb
1Gb DDR

NYGM 3.0
SH3 Commander 3.1


Any help ( or sympathy ) will be gratefully received.

[Pisces]

Last week I had SH3 crash me back to a reboot several times. (worst of all, when I encountered my very first convoy ever even got some hits in it) I never had that before. Then I noticed my videocard fan was quite dusty. And a fan inside my case started to make more noise than usual this week. I cleaned it and ran perfectly since then (many hours). I think those chips got too hot. Maybe that's your problem too.

[Cheapskate]

As Pisces says, heat problems would be the first thing to suspect with graphics corruption probs particularly if they came on suddenly with no previous warning.

Didn't realise that until couple of months ago when I got some strange artifacts followed by a CTD. Switched off, rebooted and all was well....for about 10 mins...then wallop, another CTD.

The following day, suddenly had the thought the graphics card might need reseating...opened case up. Couldn't even see the circuits on the back of the card for a thick layer of dust. The CPU heatsink and fan were even worse. And here was me thinking that the gauze filters on the front of my case, would stop all the rubbish getting in :oops: .

The graphics card (or CPU :hmm: ) never did recover...I could run Windows OK but nothing 3D. Now I hoover out the case every month.

Really hope you haven't left it too late like what I did!!

[Kurt Lange]

Thanks guys: the overheating problem was something I considered first time it happened a couple of weeks ago. I blew out my graphics card fan and CPU fan with compressed air, not that they were particularly dirty anyway.

This seems to happen only in SH3. I have other graphics-intensive games like FSX and COD2, which run without a problem. :-?

[Cheapskate]

Lucky You. You haven't killed anything!

You don't say whether a save was involved prior to all this. If it was, maybe the following may throw some light on the subject:-

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=906166&postcount=37

If this isn't the reason then your PC may just be suffering from the strain from running WAC3 ( assuming you meant this rather than WAW...apologies if you didn't!). This is a very demanding version graphically and memorywise. I don't have the worst system in the world but WAC slows it down to a crawl. Moreso than any other version I've played.

It seems that that a reboot before trying to run WAC does sometimes make things a little smoother. NB this view is very subjective.....don't have any FPS data to support it.

You also mentioned sound, and I'm wondering if your card acceleration is a little too high. Maybe bring it down a notch or two in the Control Panel???

[Letum]

Letum's tips to prevent CTDs:
If running windows XP disable those information baloons that pop up in the taskbar. To do this see the bottom of my post.
Close down all programs you are not using. EndItAll (http://www.docsdownloads.com/enditall-1.htm) is a good program to help with this.
If you are not playing online, disconnect your PC and turn off any anti-virus or firewalls.
Be very careful when doing anything above. If you don't know what you are doing and the effects it will have, then don't do it. Any changes you make are at your own risk.
Disableing pop-up Baloons (XP ONLY).
Pop-up Baloons caused crashes on SH3 for me every time one popped up. To fix this:

Copy the following into notepad...

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\... ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000

...and save the file as disableballoons.reg
Double-click on that disableballoons.reg, restart your computer and no more balloons


The above changes fixed all my crashes and SH3 runs very stable for me now.

[nirwana]

J

XP
P4 3.2 Mhz
Nvidia 6600 256 Mb
1Gb DDR

NYGM 3.0
SH3 Commander 3.1



Except for the 3.2 Mhz CPU (i had a 2.7) i had the same hardware as u until i tried WAC3. I had huge prob to even get out of range of the homeport without ctding. A major hardware upgrade fixed it. Alternativ i would have to drop wac3 since all other supermods just worked fine with this hardware.

[Pisces]

Disableing pop-up Baloons (XP ONLY).
Pop-up Baloons caused crashes on SH3 for me every time one popped up. To fix this:

Copy the following into notepad...

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\... ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000

...and save the file as disableballoons.reg
Double-click on that disableballoons.reg, restart your computer and no more balloons


The above changes fixed all my crashes and SH3 runs very stable for me now.Unfortunately for people that want to try this is that the given key-path is truncated in the middle (... between "\Microsoft\" and "\Explorer\Advanced"). I fear the execution of this .reg file will cause an error and change nothing.

[Kurt Lange]

Hi Cheapskate...no, I did mean WaW, not WAC. Wolves at War (WaW ) is in its third SH3 campaign, and I'm in Mittelmeer with the 29th Flotilla. :)

What is WAC anyway ?

I've downloaded Enditall to kill off some background processes, and took the side off my PC case, which has stopped the case fan cutting in and out. Maybe the general heat build-up was a contributing factor, because after doing that, I played for about 5 hours without a hitch.

Roll on autumn and a new computer.

Thanks for all the responses guys, its much appreciated. :up:

[Cheapskate]

WarAceCampaign is a Supermod from Germany. Link is:-

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=128050uper

If you do check the thread out, you'll see from the pics that it is very impressive. The whole feel of the game is somehow different from other Supermods as it's built around historic German campaigns. What I like most about it is that it does make you feel part of the KM rather than one sub against the whole allied war effort. The additional campaign data is coupled with a redesign of many ports to bring them more in line with their RL appearance and position. To do this HanSolo (the creator) has changed many parts of the coastline.

All this comes at a cost though. As mentioned earlier it is a real performance killer. The world wide campaign data (which SH3 loads prior to running nearly anything) means that it takes ages to load. GWX partly solved this by making some of their patrol areas into separate mods. WAC, unfortunately, doesn't do anything like this yet.

Glad to hear you have overcome the CTD'ing problem, but running with the side-off isn't reckoned to be anything but a very short term solution. Still Autumn is fairly close and hopefully you'll make it through to 'new system time 'without any more probs.

Happy WAW'ing mate!!

[Kurt Lange]

Cheapskate, had a look at that WAC link; looks rather impressive I must say!

Yep, I won't leave the case side off for too long. They reckon it'll be cooler and wetter a little later in the week, anyway ( just in time for Cambridge Folk Festival :roll: ).

Cheers !! :)