Greetings fellow Commanders !!!

[XTBilly]

Greetings fellow Commanders !!!

Been watching SUBSIM for many years, I thought that the time has come to register and say hello to the mates here!

A few words about me.
Been playing sub-sims for over twenty years, I can be considered as a fanatical to the kind. If there's a new sim, I was one of the first to get it.

In my opinion, Silent Hunter I, was the best sim ever.
I've put so much time in this... I really love it... still playing it...

Well, as time passed, Silent Hunter 4 appeared.

Frustrated at the beggining, with the quick release of an un-finished program, I quited within a month of the game purchase. Returned to SH3 GWX (the best mod).

But SH4 is something else... once you've played it, there's no turning back... and with the patches released, and the excellent mods created by the dedicated mates in-here, it rules!!! By far...

I wanted to express my true thanks to the persons deep in work, giving me so much pleasure over the years, making games so much realistic and true... very much next to the real thing... Cheers mates !!!

I've purchased a new desktop, a quad Phenom, and bought a 300euro Ati4870 1GB card. The game does not run. It flies!!!

But it also crashes... other times by just looking ships in the museum, other times playing... other times in 1 minute other in 5-10 minutes...without warning the screen displays OUT OF RANGE and the system hangs...

And it happens ONLY in SH4...
It does so in stock and with RFB...

I've contacted the manufacturer, with no help other than "Download new drivers". I've seted up WinXP 3 times so far, with the latest updates in motherboard, chipset and graphics card. With no results...

I've experimented with different screen resolutions, antialising and other graphics settings... The same... My 1000+ euro PC refuses to play SH4...
And ONLY SH4...
I would appreciate ANY help... I'm a desperate man...
Maybe my enemies cursed me after so much sinking in years..

Cheers mates, proud to belong here, the SUBSIM community.

Sincerely,

Billy.

[Akula4745]

Yikes... I had heard the museum made the game crash several times before (think it is a known bug)... but crashing during gameplay is sooooooooooo frustrating. There are also some issues about saving a game under specific circumstances... hope your solution is a simple one.

Welcome to the forums!

Akula4745

[Arclight]

Welcome aboard, billy.

My first guess is that you're experiencing an overheating issue. Try monitoring the temps on your card and possibly CPU while playing.

Ever noticed any graphical corruption just before the system crashed/locked?

Since it's a technical question, further specs/details on your system would be much appreciated.

[Rockin Robbins]

A couple of things. The ATI cards are known for running very cool. I'd check it, but wouldn't expect that to be a problem. Your CPU is quite another issue. All some bozo has to do is not use the thermal grease properly and you've got a problem. SH4 is surprisingly rough on video cards and CPUs compared to games that should give them more of a workout.

Saving games is a matter of saving games. It doesn't matter whether you save under water, with contacts around, in combat, not facing Mecca, nothing matters. I've even saved with a torpedo in the water, reloaded the game the next day and watched the torpedo hit home. SH4 save game procedure is rock solid with no issues.

One thing you MUST fix is how you start the game. If your SH4 icon starts gu.exe, you need to change that because gu.exe has issues that the game does not. Make sure your startup shortcut points to sh4.exe!!!! This is vital for game stability and uncorrupted saves.

But your crashes sound like mod soup to me. It comes from installing and uninstalling mods and doing it in the wrong order. Then different parts of incompatible mods are left active.

SH4's error handling routines aren't the best. It seems logical that if the game is instructed to look for a certain kind of ship and the file for that ship doesn't exist, the game should just skip it. It crashes instead. I understand that it crashes any time it does not find a file it is looking for.

The situation is so bad that you can't save at sea with RFB, load up TMO and resume. The game will CTD immediately. You can only change most mods after an in-port save if you want to continue your career.

In your case, the doctor prescribes a visit to the How to Reinstall SH4 thread. This will allow you to uninstall SH4 and reinstall it in such a way that you don't lose any saved games. Unfortunately, those saved games may not be playable after you're done unless they are saved in port. It all depends on how messed up your mod soup is right now.

When you get done I'll bet your CTDs mysteriously stop.

Everybody gets mod soup. I made a separate read only installation called SH4 Pristeen. It has stock 1.5, JSGME, MultiSH4 and SH4 Menumaker already in it. When my soup tastes bad I just uninstall all mods, delete everything but the mods folder from my Wolves of the Pacific directory and copy all the files and folders from my SH4 Pristeen into it. THEN I HAVE TO WRITE ENABLE EVERYTHING THERE, was I yelling? Run JSGME to enable mods of your choice and you're back up again. I don't care how careful you are. If you change mods you're going to eventually get mod soup. And it tastes lousy!

Welcome to Subsim! Hope it was worth your while to stop lurking and start participating. Let us know how all this works out.

[Arclight]

4870 is NOT known for running very cool. Plenty of people reporting >idle< temps of 80C and higher. That's the upper limit for my card!

Default fan-profile is extremely conservative, strongly recommended to create a more aggresive custom one.

[sunvalleyslim]

Welcome aboard XTBilly......You can never get enough of any SILENT HUNTER GAME..............

[XTBilly]

Thanks for the warm welcome mates.
Very nice to be here!

The computer specs are:

ASUS M4A78T-E motherboard (AM3 socket)
ASUS EAH4870 1GB Dark Knight VGA
AMD AM3 PhenomII Quad Core, 2.6 GHz.
3 GB RAM 1666Mhz
Win XP Pro SP3

A word about temperatures.
So far, the processor temp has not risen above 42C. In idle, it's about 35C. The Katana cooler works perfect, so far. We'll see in summer though.

The 4870 at idle is 46-49C. In extreme gaming it reaches 60C+-. Not a great temperature. The Dark knight has a new cooling system that reduces heat without too much noice.

Really, I do not have a temperature problem. But I'm frustrated because I didn't have not one time CTD. The whole system hangs !!! It's terrible !!
And ONLY with SH4!!

The game runs perfectly without any graphic corruption or slowdown before it hangs. In fact, I cannot start a career, because after 5-10 minutes play-time the system hangs...

I've read the post on installing-uninstalling SH4 but I didn't have the time to perform it yesterday. Since I've re-installed SH4 3 times so far, testing it with & without the patches, and the addon, I didn't see any difference in stability. The whole system crashes, after 5-10 minutes...

I will perform the exact ritual as described in the re-install thread and I will post back. Thank you for your attention mates!!

I really hope to find a solution because when I had a slow system, the game was working without problems... but really slow... and with bugs...

Now, the bugs have been eliminated, the system runs like a bullet, the mods are incredible... but it hangs...

Cheers, Billy

[Armistead]

In case it wasn't covered......

Make sure you do as stated and point the game to sh4 instead of gu.exe.
I suffered CTD's such as you and that fixed it.

Right click on your loading shortcut, properties and paste this to target.
"C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific2\sh4.exe"

Edit...RR pretty much covered it....does sound like mod soup, so I would start just with the game patched and see what happens, then load one mod at a time. Also, give us a list of the mods you used. I've gotten mod soup a few times and always resulted in CTDS and the "out of range" warning is suspect....

If the base patched game works, I would also delete the mods and DL them again just in case you've gotten files mixed up somehow. Hope that helps.

Don't give up, someone here will get it worked out for ya.

[XTBilly]

Actually yesterday night I changed the shortcut from gu.exe to sh4.exe and had another system hang.
As I said, I hadn't any CTD so far. Just complete system hangs.

Right now, SH4 is uninstalled completely from the system.
Tonight it will be re-installed and tested.

I will also re-download RFB and patch, as stated.
Actually, the reason for having RFB mod, is the realism and especially the sinking modification, something that once you' try it, you can never go back to hit point sinkings.

I hope for the best, it's really frustrating and very disappointing that this happens in SH4 only.

Thank you my friends for the advice !!!

[rditto48801]

Nice to see another SH1 fan.

What version of SH4 do you have?
Do you have just SH4?
Or do you have SH4 Gold Edition or otherwise have installed the U-Boat Missions expansion?
Which patches do you have?

I have an HIS Radeon HD 4670 512MB, not close to a 4870, but it runs SH4 just fine in terms of graphics (even on max settings), so it seems unlikely to me that it is your graphics card.

Have you checked for audio issues?

[XTBilly]

Always nice to see that I'm not the only one SH1 fan left !!

I have the SH4 collector's version, the one with the brown two-sided box, map, manual, audio CD with the game music, e.t.c.

I used 1.1-1.2 patch, before turning back to SH3-GWX, then 1.4, then purchased the U-boat missions expansion, in hope of a Japanese campaign mod. Imagine my joy when I saw Peabody's and Keltos's efforts to create one !!

One can see through my PC case from the left side, and I clearly see a red light on top of the VGA. The light flashes twice when you turn on the computer, then it shuts off.

When the system hangs, (no Alt-Tab, Ctrl-Alt-Del, nothing works, only reset button), the red light on the graphics card stays on. Only after you restart the computer flashes twice and turns off. That's why I think it has something to do with graphics. Something forces the GPU to stop working, and in result, the whole system.

I thought that I may have a defective card, but this crash occures ONLY in SH4. Otherwise, it runs smoothly and VERY fast.

I also want to note that I never "play" with overclocking. Neither the GPU nor the CPU. Tonight or tomorrow night, (depends on my job time), I will re-install as noted, and post (hopefully) any good results.

Billy, over and out!

[captziggy]

Hello Captain, check your power supply that came with your computer. If it is only 300 watts that will not be enough for your graphics card. I had the same problem with an ATI card upgrade and it crashed untill I put in a 550 watt power supply. I would suggest you get a power supply of more than what I have got . It doesn't hurt to have too much power. You can always use it to power more cooling fans. You can install this yourself. Just ask someone when you buy it to make sure it is a universal fit. Good Luck!

[XTBilly]

Originally Posted by captziggy

Hello Captain, check your power supply that came with your computer. If it is only 300 watts that will not be enough for your graphics card. I had the same problem with an ATI card upgrade and it crashed untill I put in a 550 watt power supply. I would suggest you get a power supply of more than what I have got . It doesn't hurt to have too much power. You can always use it to power more cooling fans. You can install this yourself. Just ask someone when you buy it to make sure it is a universal fit. Good Luck!

Hello Commander and thank you for your advice !!

Basically, I have chosen the peripherals of the PC myself, and I already have a power supply of 550 watt.
Well, all this is very frustrating...
My only hope is the re-installation recommended by the other captains and I hope I will be able to play (AT LAST!!!) my beloved game.
I wish I am experiencing a mod soup...

Thanks!

[Rockin Robbins]

The sound issue is also a promising one. Many have had problems with onboard sound and solved them with an add-on sound card. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, just something to take its share of the processing load.

My computer had problems with that and the sound card permanently fixed them.

[captziggy]

You might want to try a program called CCleaner. It is freeware that cleans up your computer . When you reenstall a program like SH4 there are some remnants of files left on your computer. In my experience with a reenstall I found out that my options for the game were not deleted. I would go to help and support and look for files and folders after the game is deleted. Then get rid of any files that are still there. You will be surprised at what you might find. Then do a disc cleanup and defragment your hard drive. After you do that you can use CCleaner to "wipe free" the free space on your hard drive before you reenstall. It takes a lot of time to do this but is worth it.