Okay! So far so good. I've been able to load the mod successfully and have completed three of the Naval Academy exams. I'll finish those exams in the next hour and this evening I'll embark on my first patrol.

The only glitch that I seem to be having is the problem with ambient sounds/no voices. On the bridge I hear all of the sound effects except voices and some of the sounds sound are muffled. The deck gun, for example, sounds like a BB gun. As if it has a silencer attatched. The officers lips move, but I hear nothing (kind of like when my wife talks).

I've lowered my sound card acceleration by one. Also, in SH3 Commander I set my max time compression to 2048. I also had set the "Sound Effects" compression to 1. Although, I have no idea what that would do. It was set to 2 by default. I'm guessing, based on other threads, that messing with that sound compression thing is what might've caused my sound problems. Not sure. Anyway, I rolled SH3 Commander back & reset that particular thing back to 2. We'll see what happens.

So, unless something ELSE goes wrong and I can fix that sound glitch . . . I'm hoping for a smooth trip from here on out.

The lesson then would be, follow the damned directions.

I have had similar sound related issues with SH3 1.4b + GWX 2.0.

Just for the hell of it, I uninstalled my sound card drivers, rebooted, and then re-installed them.

99% of my troubles seem to have disappeared!

The remaining 1% is caused by too many ambient sound effects playing at once and making the game hang for several seconds on the map screen when using time compression greater than 64x.

I don't really need to hear the crew coughing, farting, and sniffling in chorus with the hull creaking and gurgling in two part harmony. Is there any way to remove certain sound effects to reduce the burden on my system?

@ Graf Paper

Love the nickname.:D

Reminds me of when I was at school and I used to use Graph Paper to design fiendishly hard mazes.

:doh: Maybe I should have studied harder.

Thanks danlisa. :D

It seemed a natural choice since Germany back in those days had "Graf" prefixed on any ship large enough to induce hormonal surges.

The "Paper" part comes from my own misspsent youth using graph paper to design video game sprites and dangerous dungeons.

Ah! 8-bit! Those were the days! :sunny:

Well, I had hoped to be able to report back with "no news is good news". Unfortunately, I have bad news.

After a lengthy uninstall/reinstall I thought I had things working out. I thoroughly installed SH3/GWX/SH3 Commaneder CORRECTLY. I completed all of the training exercises. I fixed the sound problem. I completed one patrol in a new career. I saved/reloaded a couple of times during that patrol.

Now, I've endured a dissapointing and diffucult second patrol. I've been at this patrol for about five hours. I'm limping back to base after being nearly killed in a convoy attack that took me an hour or so to escape from. It's late (2:30am), and time for bed. I surface the sub and save the game that I've put soooo much time and effort into.

Today I look forward to restarting, making it home, rewarding my crew and beginning a new patrol this evening.

So, I attempt to load the last save. EFFING CRASH TO THE G*DA#N DESKTOP AT THE FRIGGIN "NOT SO FLIPPIN' LONG AGO" SCREEN.

Dissapointed, I seek answers at this forum. Seems others have had this problem. The best answer I could find was to try loading previous saves. Hey, that sucks, but at least I can have another go at the convoy that got away.

I try loading previous saves from the same patrol. NONE WORK. Sounds like I'm going to have to try starting the whole patrol again . . . if I can. If I even have the desire after WASTING so much time already with this game/mod.

Just for the heck of it I try loading a single mission. Of course, it starts just fine.

Nothing changed with the game since I successfully loaded the last save of the same career.

There is nothing wrong with my installation. I don't believe there is anything wrong with my system. I do belive that there is something wrong with the mod . . . or something.

It seems I am allergic to GWX 2.0.

That would cheese me off too!:yep: I have SH3 v1.4b with GWX2 only installed, and have had no problems with reloading to continue patrols. I can't suggest anything further regarding SH3 Commander as I haven't installed it yet, am waiting for the next GWX update before getting right into things because I will have to restart a new carreer anyway!:yep:
Did you enable any mods or alter SH3 including commander, in anyway between loads?:-?

@Blackhand

I found going back to onboard sound (AC97) stopped the crashes, use to have CSBlaster 5n1 sound card, uninstalled/reinstall drivers many times over, i took the card out cause i would get weird static sound. The odd CTD i thought was something else but once card was removed and i went back to crappy onboard AC97 now 2 speakers :oops: never had a crash or stutter since. (GWX 2, Uboat 1.2, OLC mods)

If u got onboard sound try that instead of the sound cards.

Or if your PC hasn't been cleaned out for 2yrs or more - reformat it and start over.

So, I hit the crack pipe again. I told myself I wasn't going to play this game anymore . . . but you know how that goes.

I gave it one last shot and attempted to load the patrol (via SH3 Commander) from the very first save after leaving port. (I always save once I'm far out to see and away from the harbor traffic.)

Waddya know! That one worked. I was able to complete the patrol in one sitting. I did not attempt to load any saves.

I went ahead and began a new patrol. Hopefully I'll be able to load that save when I return from business next week.

The error message didn't indicate a sound problem with the most recent CTD's. I think it has something to do with the graphics being unable to initialize . . . but that's just a guess. All of my drivers are updated, my machine is defragmented, the drive is less than half-full and the registry is clean. Yeah, the PC is a few years old, but it runs fine. Honestly, I have no idea what the problem is & it sounds like nobody else does either. Lotsa good guesses though. Keep em comin!

Till then, I'll just assume GWX is hit & miss (for me) and there's a good possibility that I won't be able to finish the patrol. The next time it crashes I'll just pretend I was attacked and eaten by a sea monster.

Up until yesterday, I would've been in the "no CTDs with 2.0 so far" crowd, but like a bozo, I left the game running and went to help my wife do something...I could kick myself for not pausing the game. :damn: I came back to the onscreen announcement saying my crew was dead and my boat was sunk!:cry: I was on my 12th war patrol and feeling pretty good about it. I figured, what the heck, I'll just launch the game and pick up where I should have left off. Now I can get no more than about 7 minutes into it before I CTD. I even reverted back to the next earlier save and it does it there too. It's crashed in as little as 45 seconds on the original save and as long as the 7 minutes on the next earlier save. I was in AN55 cruising on the surface at 8 kts, 21:00 hours, heading 164 degrees in calm seas (winds @ 2 m/sec) toward a small merchant I had smoked with a 6km+ eel shot. The game saves have all been while surfaced. I've tried it both with SH3 Commander and going GWX 2.0 sans Commander, always the CTD but with different times before the CTD occurs. The Event Log shows nothing associated with the crash. I could try going back to successively earlier game saves, but I'm afraid it will be like an inch-by-inch amputation.

There is obviously something not quite right here, I think it must be when certain circumstances come into play, there are many new additions to GWX and only a limited few could beta test it prior to it's release, now the problems start to show & the poor GWX team have a thankless big job ahead!:cry:
@ i_b_spectre & TheBlackHand, did you play GWX 1.03 prior to this & did you have any problems?:)

Yes, I did play GWX 1.03 and I do recall having a CTD on an occasion or two. However, they appeared to be linked to a corrupted save and reverting to a previous save seemed to be the fix. I have since read that game saves while submerged can cause problems, so I've been careful to save while surfaced.

I'm not saying that something in GWX 2.0 is causing this, it's just a piece of the puzzle like map location and what was going on when the CTD occurs.

It wouldn't be the end of the world to keep stepping back one save at a time until, hopefully, I found a point from which things would run normally. A few saves ago on this particular patrol, I had an interesting event that I hoped wouldn't have to be trashed. I was submerged, waiting on an approaching convoy, when a bloody ASW trawler (not associated with the convoy) escorting a coal barge came by close enough to sense me. I was full stop, he wasn't pinging, but maybe he had MAD gear, I don't know. Anyway, he began prosecuting me. I managed to stay away from his DC attacks until he apparently exhausted his supply (too bad the graphics don't show empty racks when this happens). This guy stayed with me until the convoy got closer, then a DD joined in the hunt. I was able to maneuver clear of his attacks while waiting on the juicy targets to get within range. Finally, an Empire something-or-other vessel got within parameters and I timed a dash to periscope depth when the DD was coming around after passing over me. I sent a spread into the target ship and it blew him in half. The forward half of the ship sank pretty quickly, but the aft half stabilized and sat on the surface, burning. Needless to say, the DD and the ASW trawler made me the plan of the day. I positioned my VIIB under the still floating aft section and above the sunken forward section of the Empire and watched the two hunters go 'round and 'round. Eventually, I was able to time my move from under the temporary refuge, went to periscope depth and fired the stern tube, taking out the DD. The trawler stuck around for quite awhile before he finally pulled off and headed toward his original destination. It was a little later, with the aft half of the Empire still burning on the horizon, that I encountered the unescorted small merchant and set it ablaze with the longest aimed shot I've made to date. I got close enough to pump some 88's into him until getting the "She's going down" and red sunken ship icon on the map. I radioed my report to BdU and resumed my original course. It was all going so well right up until I had a brain smelly and failed to pause when I left the computer for a few minutes. Ain't that the way life goes?

Sorry to bore you with the details, but it was a patrol that started out so unremarkably and got so interesting before I made a grave tactical error.:nope:

In any event, the GWX will never deserve a thankless anything in my book. These folks have done nothing short of saving this sim and renewing my flagging interest in pc gaming. :rock:

Hardly, that was a good story & yes it would have annoyed me to lose it, still you had the experience, I have had some similar results during a raid to Scapa Flow, when I finally got in was empty!:lol: Another thing is I always forget to get a screenshot till it's too late, it's easy to get sucked in!:yep:
My thoughts exactly!:up:

As it turns out, it looks like my CTD problem was related to a corrupted game save. I finally bit the bullet and loaded the next earlier save and the game ran fine. So fine, in fact, the Royal Navy made me the object of their affection for too long. Oh well, at least my GWX is okay even if my VIIB isn't. :dead:

That's great news i_b_spectre!:yep:
@ snwcrsh, I have had CTD's if the game was running at the same res as the desktop, just a thought, could also try setting the windows video options back to standard, 90% of game CTD's are due to video problems: drivers, windows setting, bios settings, game settings.:-?