Crash to Desktop...After how many months?

[urseus]

I have had this game since release day.
Installed perfect, played awsome.

Installed some new skins, models, sounds and recently the harbour mod. Awsome.

Played 1 career up untill 43, then decided about 5 days ago to start a brand new career. Played fine.

Now, for the first time ever, i get to the first load screen, half way along the bar, then crash. What the hell? Why is this happening now?

I decided to upgrade Vid Drivers. Same. Reinstalled the game. Nothing. Cut and pasted my profiles as i read on here, still crash.

What can have changed after 6 months to just make it go nuts?

[Damo1977]

First did you do a disk defrag after you installed the game?
It could and I stress could be a mod playin around with another mod which happens from time to time.
What type of SH3 were you playing 6 months ago that has changed so much now? (mods)

[Lane]

Not sure you call this a CTD? But I went to load a save last night
and got that message box SH3 failed and ask if you want to send
the error to Micosoft ? I guess you have seen these before?
I had two saves Just a save, then the exit save. Got the same message
on two trys to load saves. I saved I though a good distance west of
St Nazaire. I had just installed the new harbor mod for RUB 1.43
and had left from sub pen and moved out of harbor and was west of
St Nazaire. So I delete the saved and when back to port. Used the JSGME and removed Rubin's harbor mod for Rub 1.43 and removed
Rub 1.43 Using SH3 commander left port and made my saves west of
St Nazaire and seem to be ok? OH' I run defrag on my HT It said it was
time to defrag. :D Will see if have any more error boxes?
Just wonder if there was a some problem between RUB 1.43 and Harbor
Mod?
Lane :D

[urseus]

Does disk defrag really do anything?


The only thing that has changed is that i have started a new carreer.

I created a new profile for myself and a new name because i didnt want to lose my original one.

[Damo1977]

@Lane yes that is called a CTD. Now you mention it that when I had my troubles, "I think" was with RUB1.43 & Harbour Mod running together.

@Urseus I defrag at least once a week due to high computer use, after I get rid of unnecessary files or I installed new software. It helps the performance of a machine and helps prevent unnecessary 'wear and tear' on the Harddrive. I do notice too if I don't defrag and keep a 'tidy'machine that I start to run into troubles
Have you tried to run your original profile? Maybe there is just something buggy with your new career

[kholemann]

Try the lovely System Restore and go back to the day before and try it then if it does the same thing, go back another day, etc.

[urseus]

Have you tried to run your original profile? Maybe there is just something buggy with your new career

mmm the problem is i can no longer get to that screen anymore. It crashes in the first load screen.

When i get home from work i might try removing my new profile and seeing if i can get in.

After that, if it works, ill remove both of them and start a fresh. I want to start a new career, but i also want to keep my old one.

I have a feeling that i can only run 1 career at a time.

[Jail]

does it crash when you are supposed to see the intro movie ?

[Elder-Pirate]

Defrag is Very necessary to your computer and should be done Before any install.

A lot of people don't do this and a lot of people are allways having computer probs.

About the same thing as not changing the oil in your car. :lol:

Most of your computer games tell you to defrag before installing. Makes sense. :yep:

[Gizzmoe]

A lot of people don't do this and a lot of people are allways having computer probs.

A computer doesn´t stop crashing just because you do a defrag. It doesn´t solve any problems, except maybe long loading times.

[Damo1977]

Have you tried to run your original profile? Maybe there is just something buggy with your new career

mmm the problem is i can no longer get to that screen anymore. It crashes in the first load screen.

When i get home from work i might try removing my new profile and seeing if i can get in.

After that, if it works, ill remove both of them and start a fresh. I want to start a new career, but i also want to keep my old one.

I have a feeling that i can only run 1 career at a time.

a) First load screen? You mean when you start the game up?

b) this old career how old is it? Was it from 6 months ago too?
Because if you have reinstalled and modded everything than copied a old saved career I am wondering if this could be the problem.

[Elder-Pirate]

A lot of people don't do this and a lot of people are allways having computer probs.

A computer doesn´t stop crashing just because you do a defrag. It doesn´t solve any problems, except maybe long loading times.


I did not say defraging would stop crashing. But you are very wrong if you believe defraging dosn't solve any computer problems.

[Gizzmoe]

But you are very wrong if you believe defraging dosn't solve any computer problems.

Well, please enlighten me... What kind of problems can be solved with a defrag?

[Damo1977]

@Urseus and Jail if you are getting crashes...... Main question is
1. Have you modded in patrol? That a definte NO NO
2.Have you modded in mid career? That I can not definetly answer because I won't mod unitil I die or retire. But I also have had no crashes.

[urseus]

Ive modded mid career and patched mid career before, but i always go back one and start out afresh from base. Never had any problems.

I never change anything and then play from the middle of a save in the ocean, always start from base again.

Every mod and everything was running fine for weeks, untill i decided one night to start a new profile and start a new career.

That was fine as well for the few hours i played it then went to bed.

Next day i went to load the game up, and the first bar (after the movies) got half way then "Crash tell microsoft send error report."

[Damo1977]

Urseus what mods are you using? U got the latest patch (1.4b)? list all your mods. Don't do what Kholemann said just yet. Sorry Kholemann but thats getting last resort stuff

[urseus]

I think the only mod im using is Harbour mod. And skymod.

Ill do some more fiddeling around. While im drinking tonight.

What could possibly go wrong.

[Damo1977]

U sound like an Aussie............ :rotfl: I do beleive with your working times you are :up: But do you have the latest patch?

[kiwi_2005]

urseus I had this problem, one fix is to delete your old career, in the SH3 folder that kept in your My Documents folder. Just have it that one career is been saved only. If u dont wanna delete your old career then just move it somewhere.
Then SH3 shouldn't CTD when you load it up. But i only got this problem when i had patch 1.3, after installing patch 1.4 it never gave me a problem.

[urseus]

OK.


Removing the old career (cut and pasting elsewhere) fixed the problem.

Aparently, the game cant handle 2 profiles existing in the same game.




Thankyou very much too all who helped with my troubleshooting, and i hope that my help with other problems in this forum has been enough to recprocate your assitance.

[Sailor Steve]

I'm currently running three separate careers with no apparent problems. On the other hand, I think the game crashes from time to time just because. It seems to make up it's own rules as it goes along.

[urseus]

Its a dynamic installation.

[kiwi_2005]

I also believe the more ram you have the better for SH3. My mates computer has the same specs as mine, except he has 2gigs of ram where i only have 786mb of ram. SH3 on his never crashes yet mine does, and my errors are always memory errors.

So 2gigs everybody!

[Elder-Pirate]

But you are very wrong if you believe defraging dosn't solve any computer problems.

Well, please enlighten me... What kind of problems can be solved with a defrag?



Disk Defragmenter is a system utility for analyzing local volumes and locating and consolidating fragmented files and folders. You can also defragment disks from a command line using the defrag command.

Before defragmenting files or folders, see Checklist: Defragmenting volumes.
For tips about using Disk Defragmenter, see Best practices.
For problem-solving instructions, see Troubleshooting.



Troubleshooting What problem are you having?
Computer is running slowly or opening programs on the hard disk has become slow.

Cause: The volumes on your hard disk may have become excessively fragmented, possibly because you have recently created a large number of files or folders or have installed new software.

Solution: Analyze and then defragment the volumes on your hard disk if necessary. For more information, see Best practices.


Best practices Analyzing before defragmenting
Analyze volumes before defragmenting them. After analyzing a volume, a dialog box tells you the percentage of fragmented files and folders on the volume and recommends whether to defragment the volume. Analyze volumes regularly and defragment them only when Disk Defragmenter recommends it. A good guideline is to analyze volumes at least once a week. If you seldom need to defragment volumes, analyze volumes monthly instead of weekly.

Analyzing after large numbers of files are added
Volumes might become excessively fragmented when users add a large number of files or folders, so be sure to analyze volumes after this happens. Generally, volumes on busy file servers should be defragmented more often than those on single-user workstations.
Ensure that your disk has at least 15% free space
A volume must have at least 15% free space for Disk Defragmenter to completely and adequately defragment it. Disk Defragmenter uses this space as a sorting area for file fragments. If a volume has less than 15% free space, Disk Defragmenter will only partially defragment it. To increase the free space on a volume, delete unneeded files or move them to another disk.
Defragmenting during low-usage periods
Defragment file server volumes during low-volume usage periods to minimize the effect that the defragmentation process has on file server performance. The time that Disk Defragmenter takes to defragment a volume depends on several factors, including the size of the volume, the number of files on the volume, the number of fragmented files, and available system resources.
Defragmenting after installing software or installing Windows
Defragment volumes after installing software or after performing an upgrade or clean install of Windows. Volumes often become fragmented after installing software, so running Disk Defragmenter helps to ensure the best file system performance.






Like I said its something like not changing the oil in your car. Sooner or later the block will cease, allthough your computer will not cease but it may run so slow it will seem to cease.

Bet you 2bits that with your mod making and mod loading ( not counting other installs on your computer ) that if you allready have not used 'Defragmenter' you will probably notice the defrag page will be solid red. If you run defrag you may notice the FPS in SH3 will increase allthough not much but they should increase and in general the computer overall should run smoother, mine does and my computer is a pretty hopped up "Alienware" Aurora.

I know I'm an old fart and I may not know computers like you may but I do change my oil and I have a sweet running machine.



P.S. Anyone whom may like to learn more about 'Defragmenting' you can find all you may want to know at : Start/Program/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter/Help

I just highlighted a small portion of 'Defragmenter'.


Allthough I can not prove it but if someones system is really clogged up it could possibly crash to desktop especially in SH3 when the graphic card is drawing a convoy or something of that nature and the files are scattered all over the place because of non Defrag use.

[kiwi_2005]

Disk defrag is a very good tool, i diefrag my drive at least every 4 months. But i never use the Windowsxp defrag thats built into it as its too basic. Theres Disk defrag Professional which was devleoped for NT machines, you can also set it to defrag your system on every startup, so your drive is always defragged. Just make sure you do a full defrag first then set it to defrag on startup this way it takes like a minute to defrag. Otherwise it will take hrs.

[Damo1977]

@Urseus and Jail
Is it working now? If what I read it is :up:

And to everyone the more ram the better, this game has cost me approx$500
New Vid card
More ram
and of course the game itself

[Joefour]

To anybody who is interested: I just had the exact same problem. Progress Bar gets about halfway then CTD. I removed the old career which I had finished with and NOW THE GAME LOADS.

OK.


Removing the old career (cut and pasting elsewhere) fixed the problem.

Aparently, the game cant handle 2 profiles existing in the same game.




Thankyou very much too all who helped with my troubleshooting, and i hope that my help with other problems in this forum has been enough to recprocate your assitance.

[scott_c2911]

Im thinking multish3 might help you guys with multiple careers but im not sure if it will work with a modded and well used career. I believe it may need clean installs to work. I think blitzkrieg is your man to speak to about that. The program allows you to have multiple installs on the harddrive. Sh3 doesn't enjoy the prospect of more than 1 career but you can now have more than 1 sh3 pack. Alot of people use it to test new mod soups. I use it for multiple careers. I use 7zip to compress a stable install and store it away. I then decompress it to repair, copy or even install from fresh. I then use multish3 to create an alternative career folder for the dupiclate files. You must rename the new copy so it does not overwrite your older copy when decompressing into the ubi folder.

[UKönig]

Ive modded mid career and patched mid career before, but i always go back one and start out afresh from base. Never had any problems.

I never change anything and then play from the middle of a save in the ocean, always start from base again.

Every mod and everything was running fine for weeks, untill i decided one night to start a new profile and start a new career.

That was fine as well for the few hours i played it then went to bed.

Next day i went to load the game up, and the first bar (after the movies) got half way then "Crash tell microsoft send error report."

This exact situation happened to me. I think it crashed halfway to loading, because it's right around then that the program starts looking for the profile file to boot. But it finds more than one. So it gets confused. But rather than just pick one file to execute, it calls it quits and heads home for the day, hence the 'tell microsoft my computer is lazy' message. I found that deleting the new captain and running the repair option from the programs install/uninstall menu smoothed things out. Now I have taken to just renaming my new captain with the same as the first, so it's already used to saving files with that designation.

[Joefour]

I think we are headed towards a consensus here. There's no room in this game for more than one Kaleun at a time!:haha:

[desirableroasted]

I think we are headed towards a consensus here. There's no room in this game for more than one Kaleun at a time!:haha:

First of all, this thread is nine years old.... a lot of water under the bridge and many many discussions about CTD issues since 2005. I would advise tracking those down, as the advice on this thread seems outdated.

Second, I have 9-12 careers going at any one time... I've never had an issue. I know I am hardly an exception.

[Gargamel]

Where's my necro scoring chart........

[Sailor Steve]

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a325/SailorSteve/ThreadNecromancy_zps88ed9d33.jpg (http://s14.photobucket.com/user/SailorSteve/media/ThreadNecromancy_zps88ed9d33.jpg.html)