Freeze problems.....chipset question, general troubleshooting tips needed!

[Deep-Six]

Originally Posted by finchOU

Hi, ever since I got SH3 I've had an annoying problem of the game freezing up after a period away from my computer. It happens 100% of the time that I leave the computer on the opening screen more than say 2-10 minutes (and not moving the mouse....ect). I dont have this problem with other games though the only other High end games I have is Company of Heros (IL2 FB too...but old and not High end). If I sit at the computer and immediately (with in a minute or so of the openning screen) start playing I usually dont have problems. That is unless I Pause the game during a patrol....then the same thing happens after a period of time. (see specs below)

I finially got very very tired of having to reboot my computer after leaving during the loading portion of the game and comming back to a frozen opening screen. And started doing my best troubleshooting techiques. First, I uninstalled and reinstalled (got rid of mods as well). Put a fresh verison on with the 1.4 patch. No dice. Tried disabling most any process that was running on my computer via end it all and FSautostart. Turned off all firewalls and Virus protection....at least think I got all of the stuff off. It went from like 50 processes to 20ish. I tried tweaking my graphics settings in game and from my Geforce 6600 GT. No joy (though I must admit I dont know what the best thing is to tweak).

Finially I had enough and called UBI Tech support. I didnt seem to get anywhere with them though....they asked the usual like wheather I had updated my graphics driver/sound driver stuff.....but then they stumped me (third time I called) saying that maybe my CHIPSET needed to be upgraded or something. So I call HP for help on how to "update"...and they want to charge like $70.00 and hour for tech support for out of warrenty products....well I hung up and here I am. Sulking and another dead end ! Anyone got any Ideas......I really dont like the Idea of screwing with my motherboard.

General quesions: What exactly is a "chipset" and does it have a driver that I can update? Can you get a new "chipset" without getting a new Motherboard? Anyone think they have a solution or idea of what might or might not be causing this error. Thanks for you help.

Specs: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00041542&cc=us&dlc=en&lc= en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

These are my add ons:

Nvida Geforce 6600 GT
1.5 GB RAM

Ok, I will bite. Updating the Chipset drivers is not all that bad to do. Motherboard chipsets control all the functions on the motherboard. Now since you have an ASUS MB, let me do some research and will give you a good answer.

Deep-Six the friendly neighborhood PC tech.

[Zantham]

I wonder if your pausing/freezing might have something to do with power management settings? You can access these in the control panel, it generally has settings for your screen, hard drives and standby, I generally set them all to Never. You could also disable your screen saver, especially if your using a non-Microsoft screen saver (like Webshots or Picasa or something).

Here is a link that should update your chipset drivers: Your computer appears to have an Asus board with an Intel 865 chipset. Here is a driver directly from Intel that should work. Note it is dated 11/21/2006 so is actually fairly recent for the age of your computer. I am assuming you are running XP Home.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/scri...5&submit=Go%21

You specifically want the INF Update Utility, 8.1.1.1010. filesize 685k

[leeclose]

Also can you give us a quick system run down cpu/ram/hdd/vid card/Psu etc and what os?

[finchOU]

Thanks for the chipset driver.....I'll test out the game....

[finchOU]

no dice, still freezing up....any more suggestions??

[Zantham]

Did you check your power management settings? The Turn off monitor can be ok, but if your hard drive is set to turn off after a period of time, this can often cause lockups like you describe. Same with System standby, and hibernation (if you have that enabled). Even your screensaver trying to come on (esp with third-party screensavers) can cause these types of lockups after a delayed period of inactivity.

Beyond that, I can't think of too much that is easy to check to help you figure out why your computer might be doing this, beyond some sort of driver issue.

Also try running a Chkdsk on your hard drive, and afterwords try defragging. You DO have plenty of free hard drive space left?

Could also try running a memory test on your computer. I use Memtest86+ found here:

http://www.memtest.org/

You will have to download it (version 1.70), burn it to a CD, then boot your computer to that CD and let it run, preferably overnight. Along the same lines you could try some good stress tests in Windows (like Orthos or SuperPI) and see if your system locks up during those.

[leeclose]

i would suggest tune up utilites it gives you a comeplete system run down whats doing where etc and how to optimise your system available at http://www.tune-up.com/