game freeze/lock up help.

[Bonfleck]

So overall SH3 has performed pretty well on my new machine. However even after turning down the audio hardware acceleration my game just had another lock-up. The sound in the intro is also very choppy so thinking the music on may have had something to do with it I've been turning it off. Can anyone help me diagnose the problem? Thanks, B

[Bonfleck]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I'm playing straight SH3 w/patch 1.4b and no mods so far.

[Graf Paper]

Most sound problems are usually due to one of four things...

• Your drivers need updating or reinstalled. Get the latest drivers for your hardware but make sure you completely remove the old drivers before installing the new drivers. Sometimes drivers get corrupted and need to be "refreshed". Newer ATI video card drivers have broken support for AGP cards. Stick with 7.7 or earlier versions or else use the ati3d1ag.dll and ati3duag.dll from the 7.7 or earlier drivers (but no earlier than 7.3) to overwrite these files from the new drivers by copying them into your 'Windows\system32\' folder. As an option you can also simply install the latest Omega drivers as they already have built in this workaround until ATI gets its act together.

• The sound card is using memory space at the same time as the video card. If the above driver reinstall does not work then try moving the sound card to a different slot on your motherboard so the BIOS will assign a different resources to it. You'll have to uninstall and then reinstall your sound card drivers when you move the card or things can get weird.

• Playing with the sound Hardware Acceleration settings can sometimes not "take" even if you return these settings back to their original state. Windows has never handled sound acceleration very well. Your only solution is to uninstall your sound card drivers, reboot your system, reinstall your sound card drivers, and then set the hardware acceleration to whatever you wish to try, Full, Standard, Basic, or None.

• Last, but not least, you have installed a popular "codec pack" for playing your favorite videos and music. Recent versions of K-Lite Codec packs are especially notorious for breaking SH3. Try uninstalling you codec pack and see if SH3 works afterwards.

Hope this helps solve your troubles!

[kiwi_2005]

Graf Paper got the best tips. But have to add cause i had a similar problem to yours i threw out the sound card and enabled the onboard sound then the choppiness/static stopped. Are you using onboard sound or a PCI sound card? if PCI then disable it and as long as your mobo has onboard sound enable that.

[Graf Paper]

Actually, kiwi, if you had to resort to falling back to the onboard sound your trouble was likely caused by one of these faults:

• You did not disable the onboard sound in your BIOS, which created a memory allocation conflict between the onboard sound and the add-on PCI sound card.

• You forgot to uninstall the onboard sound drivers before installing your PCI sound card.

• If you did do those things, then your stuttering was caused by having the sound card installed into a PCI slot that created a bottleneck on a shared IRQ. For systems that have AGP video cards installed, never plug any card into PCI slot #1 as it shares the same resources as the AGP bus. PCI slots #3 and #4 usually work best for sound cards.

• OR

• You needed to make sure the PCI Latency Timer (also known as Transaction Delay) in the BIOS is set to a value of at least 64, but you might have to go as high as 128 to reduce the burden on the PCI bus so the sound card can "keep up" in the midst of all the direct access loading the CPU from the AGP bus and DDR RAM pipeline.

Some other tips for improving system performance and stability:

Don't forget to disable Fast Read/Write for the AGP and set the AGP apeture to at least 128 (this is how much system RAM is allocated to buffer memory writes to the video card when video RAM is full) and disable shadowing for the BIOS and video card BIOS.

Set your Gate A20 to Fast and disable Spread Spectrum for the RAM. All that Spread Spectrum does is reduce the radio frequency emissions from the RAM to reduce interference with nearby radios and televisions but it sacrifices stability in the RAM read/write to do so. This negatively impacts very fast RAM especially.

As a general rule, onboard sound does not offer anywhere near the same quality and performance as an add-on card can unless your demands are no greater than 16-bit stereo.

For newer systems some of these settings may be different or non-existent. I haven't moved into the modern 64-bit, PCI Express era yet.

I used to love building my own computer systems until I got married. Now the wife spends all the money.

[Bonfleck]

I'm currently using onboard sound on an Asus M2n32-sli deluxe, that is using "SoundMax" interface and running out of the optical port to my stereo system. The only driver I can seem to pin down that relates to audio is in my "Device Manager", "System Devices", "Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio". The driver version is 5.10.0.5010 and dated 3/5/2004. Seems to be an old driver but what do I know. Are there other drivers that pertain to audio and where do I find them? As far as video goes, I'm running an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT w/driver version 6.14.11.6902, dated 10/25/2007. I know there is a new version available but I don't appear to be having any video problems other than my card appears to have some inconsistency when using the NVIDIA control panel. (my version doesn't have the display scaling feature that is blatently discussed in the help menu.) I've turned the audio hardware acceleration in the DXDiag to "No acceleration" at which point it becomes emulated and the driver information goes blank. But even after that when playing SH3 I had a lock up after playing for 5 minutes and then 10 minutes into my next try I had my first encounter with the "SH3 has encountered a problem and needs to close black screen" scenario. After that I played and it was stable for better than two hours. I just made sure to save my progess after every encounter of sigfnificance. I've only had this machine for a couple weeks and I haven't installed anything on it other than Norton 360 and SH3. No new codecs or software other that a Java "plug in". Where do I go from here? If there is more information I can provide please let me know. Thanks for all your help. B

[Bonfleck]

Can anyone make sense of this? My event viewer has a message that reads as follows and I'm wondering if it contains a clue as to what I should do next. Thanks, B

Type:error Event ID: 1000
Description:
Faulting application sh3.exe, version 1.4.0.1, faulting module sh3.exe,
versopm 1.4.0.1, fault address 0x00029063

Data: Bytes
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 73 68 33 ure sh3
0018: 2e 65 78 65 20 31 2e 34 .exe 1.4
0020: 2e 30 2e 31 20 69 6e 20 .0.1 in
0028: 73 68 33 2e 65 78 65 20 sh3.exe
0030: 31 2e 34 2e 30 2e 31 20 1.4.0.1
0038: 61 74 20 6f 66 66 73 65 at offse
0040: 74 20 30 30 30 32 39 30 t 000290
0048: 36 33 0d 0a 63..

[Graf Paper]

Bonfleck, I just checked the Asus Support site and there are updated drivers for your on-board sound and also a very recent BIOS firmware upgrade that was posted just a few days ago.

I especially recommend the BIOS firmware upgrade as your motherboard model has had issues with compatibility for certain video cards and also types of RAM.

Support Page is here.... http://support.asus.com

MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR FLASHING YOUR BIOS EXACTLY.

I'm serious! Failure to do precisely as directed when taking the steps to upgrade your motherboard's firmware will likely result in a dead motherboard. So make sure to follow the Computer User's Golden Rule: RTFM.

I'm really very suprised that this wasn't one of the first places you checked in finding a possible solution to your troubles.

In the very unlikely event you continue to have trouble then it can only be one other thing you've mentioned, the Norton 360 you have installed.

Personally I think Norton products are crap, to put it bluntly. Maybe ten years ago it was the premier software for keeping your system safe and clean, but nowadays it is nothing more than a bloated leech that eats up your system resources and interferes with almost every function that takes place.

SH3 does not get along well with certain anti-virus and security software. Try disabling the "real-time monitor", "safe shield" or whatever marketing label they use for the parts of the program that runs in your system tray and behind the scenes.

It is, of course your choice to do as you wish but you'd be much better off removing all traces of Norton from your system and using its installation disc as a beverage coaster or frisbee. AVG Anti-virus and Comodo Personal Firewall (or ZoneAlarm) are much better choices and do not conflict with SH3 in any way. There's also the benefit that Comodo's stuff are absolutely free, full commercial versions and you can get free, personal editions of AVG and ZoneAlarm (with some missing features vs. the commerical versions). For anti-malware, such as trojans, I highly recommend A-squared from emsis soft and you can't beat Spybot Search-n-Destroy for anti-spyware protection. Those are free as well.

Good luck!