Annoying, repeated, CTD's...help?

[Erich dem Roten]

Anybody know if CTD's are common with modded versions of the game? I ran stock just fine, I don't think I ever had a crash. Now I'm running GWX2.1 and OLCE2 with the correct interior dive angles mod, and I absolutely love them.

However, I'm now getting seemingly random CTD's, and they come in bunches. At first I thought it was another mod I'd been using, the liferafts and debris mod, and removed it (even though I have a decent rig I thought that might have been pushing a little too hard). After removing it I didn't have any problems for a few days, but just now they've come back.

I save rather regularly, a habit developed from the previous CTD dilemma as well as something I just tend to do regardless of what I'm doing. I'll get a CTD, restart and reload my last save, get a CTD...load the previous save...and on. I can't really pinpoint what's going on to cause them, as I roll back my saves chronologically so I'm usually in a different place/time/etc.

Other than completely removing everything (as in everything, the sub-mods for GWX for example) and putting it back piece by piece, does anyone know of a common cure for this sort of thing? Or a common cause? At this rate I'll have more time at the loading screen than the bridge :damn:

[GoldenRivet]

Hmm. all of those mods listed are acutally fairly stable.

are you using an open hatch mod?

[Erich dem Roten]

No, I'm not...it's very strange. It seems to happen only when certain things occur, though I can't narrow them down very much. For instance, I just reloaded a save prior to a CTD and played without issue for about an hour...then suddenly a CTD. This kind of behavior makes me think that there is a specific event causing this. :hmm:

I will probably run a check on my hardware tomorrow, but looking briefly at my temps my CPU isn't even breaking a sweat.

[GoldenRivet]

using vista?

[Task Force]

Error with the save, You could backup the file that stores the save in My doccuments, and load a earlyer save.;) Had a issue with that myself. Went back to a earlyer save. it Fixed it.

[nirwana]

Someone need to create an utility that gives us the choice where the stuff that is now stored in the personal folder should go. Using the personal folder always caused major trouble since it was introduced by MS.

One thing u could try. Delete the hidden pagefile used as virtual RAM. GWX and other smods use it a lot. If its corrupt or too slow through being fragmented it causes trouble. After manually assigning it to a 2nd HD i didnt have any issues anymore as u described.

[Von Manteuffel]

If the CTDs seem to be associated with certain in-game events, I'd have a look at memory - RAM and video memory. This used to happen to me sometimes - e.g. when the system loaded a large convoy, or after torpedoing a large ship which resulted in lots of flames & smoke.

I cured it (fingers crossed ) by:

a) reducing some of the demands on the video card. (Nvidia Geforce Go 7950 GTX (512Mb). I simply set the card to "performance"

b) shutting down as many processes as possible before playing, even though I have 4 Gig of Ram.

[sharkbit]

Another possibility for the CTD's, if none of the above help you, is heat.
Try blowing out the dust in the computer innards and checking to see if your fans are working.

I had constant CTD's after about an hour or so of playing. I upgraded RAM and did some some tweeks with little change. Someone on this forum suggested a possible heating issue and I sometimes thought that might be a issue by the way the game acted at times(constant crashes after the kids had been playing on it for a while, computer just shutting off on its own occasionally, etc...).

I cleaned out the innards, ordered a case fan and new power supply(found my power supply fan was not working and computer had no case fan installed). Until I got those, I ran the game with the case open and had no CTD's what so ever. Once I installed the case fan and new power supply, the problem went away.
Last week, I played hooky from work on my birthday...no kids, no wife, just me, the dog, and SH3 with GWX 2.1...pure bliss.:sunny: :sunny: :sunny:

I played 8 hours straight without a single CTD.

So that may be one possibility if nothing else works for you.
Just a thought.
:)

[Task Force]

Same here Ive played 10 hours(darn adicting Sh3 with GWX:lol: ) and had no CDTs;)

[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.

[Erich dem Roten]

Thanks for all the responses, they are very appreciated. I think I've found the culprit, and it has a lot to do with what Von Manteuffel and Letum are talking about. I disabled as many background programs as I could, and reduced pixel shading (I think? Whatever the in-game graphics option is) to 70%, and so far it's been running Ok.

Heat shouldn't be an issue, I built this computer myself and have lots of airflow (two 25cm fans, a 12cm fan, PSU fan, GPU fan, CPU fan). Corruption of saves also don't seem to fit the profile.

Here are conditions I know of: when CTD's occur, there are always at least 3 or 4 ships around and at least one of them is burning/smoking. I think it's a matter of memory and GPU (I run an nVidia 8600GT 512 with 2 gigs of RAM).

[Task Force]

Would you be running Xp or Vista. you might want to get more ram.;)

[Erich dem Roten]

I use XP, I don't want to touch Vista until it has all its bugs worked out.

[Jinmei]

Ahoy! I would like to put only so much to it to his problem solution that worthy it SH3 dll which can be found in his portfolio. to exchange files for fresher one. Is worth it dared at me they ceased to be the program collapses and other phenomena,I suggest it yet concerned to look at that the sound card IRQ is not used by an other hardware element,this caused a problem at me.