CTD Problem. Did I Miss an Important Golden Rule?

[Scurvy]

Hey guys, I've been away from SHIV for a while, but now, I can't seem to stay away from it.

OK, I was assigned to patrol the Carolina's and, enroute, found a couple of easy unescorted merchants to sink.

So, after sending a torpedo into each one of them, I stayed submerged and waited...

Oh, and I'm patched to 1.4 and have no mods.

So, the Medium Old Split Tanker sank.

The lead ship, a Small Old Split Tanker, slowed to a crawl, so I surfaced and began pouring shells from my deck gun into him.

Soon enough, he began to sink.

I changed views to external, while the deck gun was still loading and the merchant was sinking and my monitor went black and I got the message that SHIV encountered an error and had to be shut down.

So, I lost a good two hours of work. :yeah:

I know, from lurking on this invaluable board, not to save while submerged and to drive at least 10 nm away from my kills and not to save near any ships.

So, is it also not advisable to change views while the deck gun is loading or a ship is sinking?

My specs are XP-Pro SP3, 2.6gHz Athlon, 2 GB RAM, ATI 256MB video card, nothing running in the background, including antivirus.

[Webster]

well it could be your video card overheated and cut out or you ran out of memory space which is often the result of not cleaning up your computer before playing. if you run internet options to clear temp files and run disk cleanup utility befor playing it helps a lot and also defrag your system if its been a while. (check for dust, you could be overheating)

your video really should be 512 so you could be ok with 256 but not as good as it should be. you didnt say "which" video card you have because it can matter if its not new enough design (the game specs underate the stuff you really need so keep that in mind).

for now make sure you turn off as much extra video options as you can so your system can run better and that should help

[sharkbit]

Definitely look at heating issues.

Blow the dust out of your case and check that the fans are working(case and power supply).

When I first got SH3, I'd get CTD's after about an hour or so of playing. Did the defrag, registry cleaner, upped the RAM-no help. :damn:

There was no case fan in my computer and the power supply fan was not working. Got a case fan, new power supply, blew out the dust from the innards-runs like a champ. :yeah: I haven't had a CTD for over a year now and I break all the rules on saving games. No save game issues(knock on wood).

:)

[irish1958]

Above correct. This is classic behavior for an overheated video card.

[SteamWake]

That and ensure you have the latest drivers or at least a set of drivers that work :haha:

[Munchausen]

:hmmm: Did 1.4 fix that old bug where sinking one particular mechant ship causes a CTD :06:

[Armistead]

I got a lot of CTD's with 1.4.

Unless your CP has 4 inches of dust I doubt it's an overheating problem, just not a lot of action going on. Sometimes you can get around a lot of action or contacts and if your ram can't keep up...a crash results.

Make sure you point your shortcut to SH4 instead of gu.exe... http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6421019045/m/1381091756?r=1891058756#1891058756

Make sure you use DX 9, the game works off that. You can load DX 10, but make sure you load DX9 from the disc...you can have both loaded.
I was getting tons of CTD's because I wasn't using DX9.

[Scurvy]

For anyone with the same issues, my PC is pretty clean, since I blew it out, not long ago.

And my video card is an ATI Radeon x1600, with all updated drivers for everything, including sound card, etc.



But, I did what Armistead suggested and redirected my shortcut to point to sh4.exe, instead of the inept gu.exe and I have not had a problem, since.

Thanks, fellas! All good advice.