Fed up of game crashing.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Col7777

Thanks Pro,
I have posted this before but here goes:
My SH4 is a disk version plus I got the upgrade years ago which I copied to disk making it 1.5
I have it installed on my D: drive D:/Ubisoft/Silent Hunter 4
My PC is running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit I have 16GB Ram, i5 CPU 3.50 GHz

The Mod I have installed is WeDiveAtDawn the Time Excel was no higher than 1024

Just out of interest I was playing one scenario and got 3 ships showing on the map, I set a course for them, I got closer and closer and no sight of them, I was almost on top of them but they were not there but they were showing on the map, I gave up and found other miles away.

Col.

The "Orange" text above is what prevents a full use of LAA on your computer. You basically have two options. The easiest, but scariest, it to alter your boot procedure for Windows 7. This will give you probably close to 3Gig of RAM to use for SH4 and mods. The alternative is to download a Windows 7 64-bit ISO and re-do your Windows as 64-bit. You would end up with more RAM available, maybe up to 4Gig this way. You use your same license key, but you would then be using the 64-bit version. The only cost involved with that is if you order the MS disk instead of downloading an ISO, or even a USB stick image to install with. The main problem with doing that is having to re-install ~everything~. You could look at MS's 32-bit & 64-bit Windows FAQs for a little info. Very involved but in the long-run, the better way - although, Windows 7 Support has been dropped, and it won't be long before things quit working with Windows 7, which is about as sad as XP going away for me...

Anyway, the "easy but potentially dangerous" way, of altering your boot process, in to change the Boot.ini with BCDEdit, or go to NeoSmart's site, and get their "non-commercial" copy of EasyBCD. Look near the lower-right potion of that screen. You do have to "register" your email with them. These people also have a 4gig utility, and more info on that page. It's a bit more "safe" to do edits with EasyBCD, and they do have some helpful info there. As background, MS has all sorts of documents online, such as BCDEdit Options Reference that can give you a background of what's going on when you use EasyBCD, or if you wish to do it directly yourself. You would be most interested in the BCDEdit /set info, and the use of "increaseuserva", which has a link pointing to 4-Gigabyte Tuning: BCDEdit and Boot.ini. All of that info is clear as mud, right? Here's what EasyBCD looks like while running:



You would of course use the "BCD Backup/Repair" first, and make a back-up of what you have. You should also have a Windows Emergency Recovery disk close by, just in case, and preferably all of your data backed-up. Once your boot is backed-up, then you can change things. Let me know if you want to dive that deep...

Edit - Man! that pic is ~huge~!!! what happened to the little thing on my screen

[Col7777]

I will admit some of this stuff scares me.
A while ago I had all my flight sim stuff on a hard drive, all my repainted aircraft and lots of other FS related files all stored on a spare drive on my PC.

I was having problems with my Flight Sim and decided to un-install it and do a fresh install, my mistake I know but I accidentally formatted the hard drive with all my stored files, I was gutted.

I forgot about getting one of those programs that brings stuff back and I reused the hard drive, I did re-install my FS but I missed all my other files and it took me ages to get some of them back but others I had from years ago and are lost.

So going back to the post above, I envisage things going wrong and I will end up spending days/weeks trying to get my PC working again, that's my luck believe me.
I do appreciate any help you guys are giving but when it gets too technical I shy away, I don't mind tweaking the odd file here and there but I know my limits.

Col.

[propbeanie]

I don't know if you have the funds, but you could go to a used computer shop and pick-up an older desktop that has an OK graphics card and Windows 7 64-bit on it, and use that as a gaming-only machine... Do like I did with mine, and put a Windows XP disk in the box with it, and Win7 "automatically" adopts the XP drive as its child, and offers to dual-boot for you, so you can play games that are no longer compatible with 7. Or, crazier still, have a DOS / Win95 / Win98 machine over in the corner, with a Sound Blaster 16 inside for all them good ole games... Talk about a maintenance nightmare though...

[jimmbbo]

Unsure how relevant this may be to the OP's problem, but in the recent past I have had a CTD when loading a saved game, and on another saved game the sonar-plotted targets were missing on the surface... Deleting the saved games and starting a new career solved those problems. Annoying but not catastrophic. (Win 10 64 PC, 32GB RAM with NVidia graphics).

Likely an unrelated coincidence, but a bigger problem arose when my PC would freeze and become non responsive at varying intervals from a minute or two to more than an hour.
After using Safe Mode to confirm the bare bones of the PC were working normally, researching the "Windows freeze and not responding" problem led me to clearing the Windows File Explorer history following the instructions at this website
For good measure I also cleared the SH4 saved games and started a new career. The computer has been glitch free for more than a day, SH4 plays flawlessly, and seems to have less stutter at higher TCs...

[Col7777]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the info, I can't get that screen in the link you posted as I'm on Windows 7, I think I have a facility to delete by browsing history and cookies but when I do that I sometimes lose my auto logon to websites, I have to re-do my sign in which can be a pain.

Col.

[jimmbbo]

Originally Posted by Col7777

Hi Jim,
Thanks for the info, I can't get that screen in the link you posted as I'm on Windows 7, I think I have a facility to delete by browsing history and cookies but when I do that I sometimes lose my auto logon to websites, I have to re-do my sign in which can be a pain.Col.

This link shows the same process for Win 7...

File Explorer is a Windows feature separate from browser history and cookies, so clearing the browser data would unlikely affect SH4...



Good hunting!

[XenonSurf]

[EDIT]
Obsolete with response above, I hope it works for you.

LAA and 4GB patch (alternative) work only with 64-bit OS...You go out of RAM if you don't use either of them (CTD), otherwise you must find another solution.

XS

[Col7777]

Thanks XS,

I am experiencing something unusual now, when I look in users my documents I no longer see the SH4 folder, I looked in the other folders in case by some quirk it has gone in there but sign of it, yet the sim still plays.

Also I was playing another mission and went to save it and the old saves from the previous were there, not sure where they are on my PC.

Col.