Hangs after 1-2 hours of game play

[wmjoers]

After playing SH4 (1.3) without any kinds of problems it often hangs after 1-2 hours game play.

It's not in any particularly screen or function within the game, it just hangs and tries to open a debugger. After that I have to kill the process manually. When returning to windows the resolution and colors are all messed up.

I run on a HP Pavilion dv8000 with a nVidia Geforce GO 7400.
I've upgraded my drivers. Oh...and 2 gb ram.

Any other players with the same experience?

[TDK1044]

Sounds like an overheating issue. Is your tower well ventilated?

[wmjoers]

It's unfortunatly a Laptop. But I've never had any overheating problems before with other graphic intense games.

[maerean_m]

The messed up colors can be caused by:

• overheated video card memory
• video driver memory being not enough. try and increase the "AGP Aperture Size" in the BIOS (if there is any).

You could also try with "Texture quality" OFF (needs game restart).

[wmjoers]

Thanks for the tips.
I'll also try to downclock the GO 7400 GPU using nVidias nTune tool.

[SteamWake]

Silly question but... are your batteries charged ?

As batteries discharge at some point there voltage drops and the current drawn actually goes up. Its a vicious circle.

There is also this little gizmoe (Laptop 'cool pad') http://www.roadtools.com/product.html

[wmjoers]

Haha! Yes, my batteries are fully charged. I actually run with the AC connected whenever playing games.

But here is some more info regarding the crash:

- The GPU is not overheated. It actually never went past 50 degrees celsius. The nVIdia GO 7400 has a threshold level at 105 degrees celsius so I think it's safe to say that the temperature is not the evil creature acting here.

- When the HS4 process hangs the music still plays. (not that I know if it's a clue or not)

- When the HS4 process hangs it has consumed 1 gb memory and i have a 1.5 gb swapfile. After I terminate the SH4 process the swapfile drops to 300 kb.

- The screen resolution is stuck to 800x600 with a color depth of 4. And I can't access nVidias utilities to contact the GPU.

- After turning of all graphics acceleration and the turning it back on the system behavs as normal and I can start the game again.

- When starting the game and loading my last saved location it consumes 1 gb memory again and the swapfile is 1.5 gb.

[Peto]

That would annoy me to no end. I feel your pain (I'm a computer tech by trade). It sounds to me that you might be having a memory conflict... Are there any other programs running in the background (virus scan, adware programs, etc)? If so--turn off everything you can that shows in the system tray (lower right of the screen). And check your virtual memory settings (I find it's best to let windows manage it as it sees fit). And--DEFRAG. Many say it doesn't do anything but I've been doing this stuff since dos 5.0 and I know that a defrag can fix wierd problems sometimes.

Good Luck!!!! Seriously!!!

Peto

[RadiationRob]

make sure your grafics are set to 1024 by 768 .. that fixes a ton of issues

[cali03boss]

1) its a company made computer
2) its a laptop

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by cali03boss

1) its a company made computer
2) its a laptop

and ?

I still think it sounds like a heat issue.

[Fat Bhoy Tim]

I'd go for a heat problem myself. I'm running on a laptop myself, but between core 2 duos and a top gfx card I haven't ever had problems with it locking up.

The exhausts are like BBQs are a few hours though.

[Redwine]

SH IV, seems to have some kind of problem with memory fragmentation... i cant play more than one mission without loss FPS, each mission i start, i loss FPS in comparision with previous mission, finally the game freezes or hangup.

If i use other program before start up a mission in example, hexeditors, photoshop, ACDSee... when i open SH IV i loss lot of FPS, i need to start up a mission after a recent and fresh reboot.

The program seems to have some kind of troubles with fisic and virtual memory fragmentation.

PIV 3.4, ATO X800XT PE 256mb, 3GB RAM, 4GB VM.

[donut]

Nice of you to confirm this. When useing JSGME to deselect a mod for reverse engineering,& reinstall we always defrag, It's splintered files time.

[Redwine]

Originally Posted by donut

Nice of you to confirm this.

Admiral Donut ....

I remember other persons commented it before too...

Originally Posted by donut

When useing JSGME to deselect a mod for reverse engineering,& reinstall we always defrag, It's splintered files time.

I no use JSME but i note if i play more than one mission without rebbot, i start to have mouse sticky, freezed time compression, and finally a lot of FPS loss.

:hmm::hmm: