OK, of course I tried running SH3 after shutting down Internet connection, Zone Alarm, MSN Messenger, Saitek Profiler, etc. Got the same error, but sometimes Dr Watson is not started, don't know why.
idle.exe should be the system idle process, so I think it's normal. _total.exe is a bit stranger, but it has the same pid so must be the same thing as idle.exe. I found no idle.exe or _total.exe file on my PC. I am unfamiliar with Kaspersky (I know it's payware, and not cheap) but I just run Spybot Search & Destroy and it only found some cookies. Maybe I can download the trial version of Kaspersky and try that.
About no dvd you are right, I am using a nodvd to preserve my original dvd. By the way I am worried about it because when I got it from Simware it was loose in its box, so it had some nasty scratches, I could install the game but, with hindsight, I should have returned it. But i was so impatient!
I looked better at Dr Watson's logs and I found several cases when sh3.exe goes in error.
The first one is this:
*----> Back Trace dello stack <----*
FramePtr ReturnAd Param#1 Param#2 Param#3 Param#4 Function Name
0012FD98 784AB80C 00EA0000 118FBE58 0012FE10 00000000 ntdll!RtlZeroHeap
0012FE44 7C34218A 00EA0000 00000000 118FBE60 118FBE40 ntdll!RtlFreeHeap
0012FE8C 00231025 118FBE60 118FBE60 118FBE40 008042F9 !free
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 !EngFree
This is an error I sometimes got when exiting SH3, looks like the program cannot free the memory allocated, it causes no harm but its worrying. I read on the forum of other people having this problem.
The error I am getting in my little hot surface action against corvettes is this:
*----> Back Trace dello stack <----*
FramePtr ReturnAd Param#1 Param#2 Param#3 Param#4 Function Name
450D0B78 45F42E78 45F3D1BC 368F19F2 4225E2DB 00000000 !<nosymbols>
015C6B48 015A9040 015A57A0 015A9AD0 015C16A6 015A9010 <nosymbols>
015A94C0 00000138 082444F6 560A7401 310015FF C483015C !<nosymbols>
And is strange because al the <nosymbols> whose meaning I don't know. I can steadily replicate this error all times I want, in few minutes game crashes.
But the errors I got while on patrol, that almost cost me my whole patrol, were different:
*----> Back Trace dello stack <----*
FramePtr ReturnAd Param#1 Param#2 Param#3 Param#4 Function Name
12734594 408442E0 00000000 00000000 00000000 3F800000 !SoundDataLib:
perator=
468F03D8 00000000 12734594 09782CD6 D3F07B4F 00000000 <nosymbols>
*----> Back Trace dello stack <----*
FramePtr ReturnAd Param#1 Param#2 Param#3 Param#4 Function Name
01534118 00000000 0A87E5A0 00000002 00000000 00000002 !sTexture::Release
These errors seem to be related to sound and texture (graphics?).
These are not easy to reproduce, infact using a previous save (about an hour earlier) I was able to continue and end the patrol. But using the latest save, the error happened within a couple of minutes. So I had to abandon this save (after I had torpedoed two ships in a convoy
). But I have kept this save so I can try if the error happens again after the updates I have done.
So I have some attempts to do:
- try stock SHIII
- try without nodvd
- try the old in-patrol save (I must try this with all mods enabled otherwise it will crash)
- I will also try the small mission on the laptop to see if it crashes there too.
or maybe
- trash everything and go playing pinball and solitarie ???
Thanks for support
Maraz