My solution for crashes (sound-related), enabling AA and other problems

[GlobalExplorer]

This is a step by step instruction to make SH4 more stable and remove many problems. Do this at your own risk!

Since I started using and modding SH4 (ca 5 years ago) I had a lot of such problems. I think it would be a good idea to give an overview to which solutions I have found. Today I use a ton of mods, and it only crashes if I do something stupid like messing with the game data or constant alt-tabbing. Also the annoying sound loops and sound related crashes seem to be gone (let's say "99%")

I) Most problems are sound related. I discovered this when I uninstalled ALL sound mods or overwrote them with the original files. This cures a lot of problems like crashes, sounds entering infinite loops, or "crazy" sounds.

That is to say, the simplest "solution" is to simply restore ALL original sounds This includes the file sh.sdl, make sure that you backup this file before you install any mods so you may restore it. If you want to be safe, make a copy of your entire /Sound folder before you install anything else, and a good way is to create a zip file Data/Sounds.zip.

BUT what if we want to use mods?

The solutions were not easy to come by, because they involve doing several things simultaneously. If I would do just one thing, there would still be some problems, while others might be gone.

important are:

II) converting ALL .wav files to mono, 44khz

I think this is one of the most crucial things to repairing Silent Hunter 4's sound system (modded), and is violated by many mods (although the creators bear no guilt because this is an obscure problem).

Ok, have yourself a look at the wave files used by UBI (/Sounds/*.wav) and you will see that they are all a) mono and b) 44khz.

Nobody knows what the problem is, but some files (e.g. Submarine_CrashDive_INT.wav in Sailor Steve's excellent version of the DBSM mod) stop creating problems only after I converted them (ALL of them).

There are many programs to do this, one is dbpoweramp music converter: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

Another thing people recommended was to disable sound acceleration in dxdiag. I am not sure but it could help.

Google for "disabling sound acceleration dxdiag". You find one tutorial under "C.DirectX" here: http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/guidewin.php

III) fixing memory issues with the so called "4GB patch"

You might have heard of Large Address Aware, and how it can fix some memory issues SH4 has. There are several instruction threads how to use it, unfortunately I found none was complete. I "use" the 4GB fix for 2 years and only recently I discovered it had never been installed correctly ..

This one is especially important for XP users and people with 32 bit OS. But don't try this unless you have at least 4 Gigabyte RAM in your PC!

What it does is to tell Windows to reserve 1 GB for the kernel and enabling applications to use the remaining 3GB RAM (default is 2GB kernel / 2 GB applications on a 4GB PC).

What many tutorials forget to make clear is that without enabling the /3GB switch in c:\boot.ini, the LAA patch is pointless at best.

III.a) Enabling Windows to use 3GB for applications

You must make the following change to your C:\boot.ini. Do this at your own risk, and better skip LAA completely if you don't understand.

boot.ini is a hidden file, so you must know how to make it visible.

the switch is added after to the last line of boot.ini

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /3GB

This is fine if it works, but breaks my video driver (SH4 would studder and crash). The reason: Many drivers expect 2 GB to be available for the kernel and now find only 1. I also found information on the net that this happens on ALL ATI cards, so it may not be just a single incident. You may not need this, but you can fine tune the memory with another switch /userva*

the last line of my boot.ini looks like this:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /3GB /Userva=2900

*userva defines the exact amount of RAM to use for applications. In my case 2.9 GB. You can try with values between 2000 and 3000 until your games run stable.

III.b) Only if you get that part working, and Windows boots succesfully with the /3GB option, get LAA: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/th...-aware.112556/

III.c) remove write protection from SH4.exe before you run LAA. This is crucial, because LAA will not tell you, and Sh4.exe is write protected by default!! It was never working on my system for that reason alone!

III.d) enable large adress aware on SH4.exe

I will skip instructions how to exactly use LAA, you can find them at http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/th...-aware.112556/

III.e) check if LAA is enabled. You can do this e.g. in LAA under "Advanced" via Add->Files, then browse to and select SH4.exe. Only if it says under LAA "True", the patch is working!

After all these steps there is an additional 900 Mb RAM for my SH4 (+40%), which gives benefits in many ways.

In the following post I will also explain what I had to do to enable AntiAliasing, but not today.

I hope this helps some of you.