Frustrated to tears with CTDs

[floundericiousWA]

I finally got SH3 earlier this year (in around March) after getting a new Dell XPS 410. It has a 1.8 MHz Core Duo processor, 1GB of memory and an NVIDIA 7300LE 512MB video card...

I had no problems playing the game until this summer and was freaking loving it ...then...all of a sudden

I CTD non stop... YOU SUCK AGAIN!

I've updated the NVIDIA drivers to the latest (100 something. something)...no help...

I've read here and elsewhere about turning down the sound acceleration...no joy...

The CTDs come at virtually any time after the game engine gets going (after I'm in a submarine). It happens primarily at station changes (say, going from the watch deck to the map view or map view to exterior or map view to periscope). The screen freezes, the audio drops into a 1 second loop...and the computer takes its pick of CTDing normally, CTDing back to 4-bit 640x480 corrupted graphics view, or just plain freezing so I have to hold down the power button and cold boot.

I have no #()*$*#($* clue what to do with this thing...

NO mods installed
v1.4 patch installed (yes, for my DVD version and yes, for the North America version)
I've updated the NVIDIA drivers...I even dl'd the latest DirectX 9.0c drivers for all the other crap...
I've cleaned out the SH3 folder in my documents...and it gets better..for about 20 minutes...
I've uninstalled and installed fresh...I've defragged...I turn off as many of the obvious processes as possible (ipodservice, e.g.) and the anti-spyware tools

I seem to be able to do an academy mission...80% of the time without a CTD...but as soon as I try career...I'd give it about 35 minutes MAX and it shuts me down...

This is very serious (harumpf!harumpf!harumpf! - sorry, even as pissed as I am, I still have to throw in the blazing saddles ref )

I'm not doing anything that I can tell differently...I'm () this far from throwing the ****ing thing under my car's tires and burning its entrails in frustration...

Any thoughts?

Ok, any HELPFUL thoughts?

[baggygreen]

Firstly, gday and welcome to the forums, you came to the right place for a hand

Next, the only thing i can think of with regards your CTDs that might help in the immediate future is to set SH3 to run as a high priority program through task manager. In the longer term id consider upping the ram to 2 gig, but thats optional.

No doubt someone with a bit more technical expertise will be along shortly to help out more

[floundericiousWA]

I'll check that and try it, baggygreen, thanks!

Please keep'em coming...

[bigboywooly]

Hmmm
IIRC doesnt the 7300 only have 128mb onboard and takes the rest from the RAM ?

Still should be enough GPU power to run the game though
If it ran ok before and not now then something has happened in between
Windows updates ?

[Patboot]

Hum I hate to suggest this, but it almost sounds like the Vcard is packing its bags for a trip south. Any other graphic-intensive game give you any problems?

[Paajtor]

I've had this problem too, on my previous PC.
It can be either faulty RAM, HD, or GPU.
I would check the RAM first...take it out, and re-insert it...and make sure you're grounded, before touching the RAM-stick(-s).

[flag4]

high there flounder'

i'm wondering what your SH3 DETECTION TOOL says ?

have you done any 'saving game' under water - this knackeres things up, i can speak from personal experience !!

definatlley step up to 2gigs for your memory - about 25 - 35 quid, when you can afford it.

it could be that the dual core is struggling. if it is 1.8 per core it will probably only be using the one - not both at 3.6 ( ?? )

is it vista or xp - i've heard of people struggling with sh3 and vista. posts and threads are here at this forum.

other things that could help: disable anti virus and internet connection, you can turn them on again after. turn down the special effects - particle density ??

if there is a send error report note down what it says: not the whole thing just the sh3.exe stuff at the begining. some of the crew here will be able to help you with that.

as far as throwing the '....ing thing away' back-off for a while. gather your momentum ( ?? ) again and come back to it. for once you have it running smoothly with GWX and it's got its hooks in to you, it will be being depth charged, rammed, lost, missed torpedos, faulty sabotagued machinery that will drive you insane, whilling away the hours roming the empty sea for days and days will drive you nuts.

dont give up
welcome aboard

patience patience patience

flag4

[floundericiousWA]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone...let me address each:

Hmmm
IIRC doesnt the 7300 only have 128mb onboard and takes the rest from the RAM ?

Still should be enough GPU power to run the game though
If it ran ok before and not now then something has happened in between
Windows updates ?

I'm not sure about the NVIDIA card... I DID notice that, while running, when I tabbed out and checked the task manager, the sh3.exe was consuming around 500MB of memory and that physical mem was at around 8xxMB/1024MB

I've had this problem too, on my previous PC.
It can be either faulty RAM, HD, or GPU.
I would check the RAM first...take it out, and re-insert it...and make sure you're grounded, before touching the RAM-stick(-s).

Holy crap-charges, batman, I hope not... I'll certainly bump the RAM, when I do I'll take a look and see if there are any problems with the contacts and mountings.

Hum I hate to suggest this, but it almost sounds like the Vcard is packing its bags for a trip south. Any other graphic-intensive game give you any problems?

Not really...the "modern" games I've given a whirl on this include Battle for Middle Earth I and II, Empire at War, SW: KOTOR and KOTOR II

None of those have given me graphics crashes except BFMEII, which was obviously a "your computer is to damn slow to run this with as many graphical options selected" issue..

I've also recently had a problem with TES3: Morrowind freezing while running...

high there flounder'

have you done any 'saving game' under water - this knackeres things up, i can speak from personal experience !!

definatlley step up to 2gigs for your memory - about 25 - 35 quid, when you can afford it.

it could be that the dual core is struggling. if it is 1.8 per core it will probably only be using the one - not both at 3.6 ( ?? )

is it vista or xp - i've heard of people struggling with sh3 and vista. posts and threads are here at this forum.

other things that could help: disable anti virus and internet connection, you can turn them on again after. turn down the special effects - particle density ??

if there is a send error report note down what it says: not the whole thing just the sh3.exe stuff at the begining. some of the crew here will be able to help you with that.

as far as throwing the '....ing thing away' back-off for a while. gather your momentum ( ?? ) again and come back to it. for once you have it running smoothly with GWX and it's got its hooks in to you, it will be being depth charged, rammed, lost, missed torpedos, faulty sabotagued machinery that will drive you insane, whilling away the hours roming the empty sea for days and days will drive you nuts.

back atcha! My U-4 is feared throughout the north sea! muwhahahaha

well...at least until I've shot all 5 torpedoes, then seagulls dive bomb me with impunity :rotfl:

Mem - check, it's next on the list

I do deactivate (including the background monitoring stuff) the Trend Micro Anti-Spyware software and internet, just in case... I also kill the Ipodservice.exe and ituneshelper.exe tasks...

I've had the problem with particles turned way down, and high qual textures turned off... so I'm almost thinking the problem is with the computer hardware...maybe running out of memory so the program runs off a cliff, so to speak...

I'll try it again and post the "error report output" (for just the sh3.exe portion) when I get it...

[flag4]

look forward to reading your report.

bon voyage Flounder'

[floundericiousWA]

Originally Posted by flag4

look forward to reading your report.

bon voyage Flounder'

Ok, it got me again...this time I was able to have some fun for a while, including having a V&W DD cruise right over my head while submerged off Hartlesport


Then, after nightfall, while approaching the harbor, it started stuttering and then crashed...


AppName: sh3.exe AppVer: 1.4.0.1 ModName: kernel.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00016a2

Some stuff from the actual report:

Module 1
sh3.exe
Image Base: 0x00400000 Image Size 0x00000000
Checksum: 0x000f90b7 Time Stamp: 0x32ce8647

Version Information:
Signature: feef04bd
structver 00010000
filever 1.4:0.1
prodver 1.4:0.1
flagmask: 00000017
flags 00000000
OS 00000004
filetype 00000001

Module 2
ntdll.dll
etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum


I was thinking about what ya'll said above...and I do recall reading in a PC Gamer or other Computer magazine about some of the newer video cards "claiming" to have 512MB...but really only having like 64MB and using system memory to get to the "512MB" number...

I think I should try upgrading the memory and, if that fails, upgrade the video card...

[bigboywooly]

Hmmmm kernel.dll

Is that what you always get ?

[johnno74]

My bet is bad or overheating hardware. How often does your machine completely lock up when this happens, as opposed to just SH3 exiting?

Could be out of memory. You haven't disabled your pagefile have you? SH3 uses tons of ram, particuarly with GWX. This wouldn't bring down windows tho. Check you haven't got your pagefile set to 0 mb anyway... disabling your pagefile is a bad idea IMHO, yes it can improve your machine's percieved performance in some situations, but it can also often cause out of memory crashes.

A more likely possibility is bad ram, Download a memory diagnostics iso - these can't be run under windows so they are normally a bootable CD ISO you burn to cd and pop in the drive then reboot. I've used one from microsoft which proved that my random windows bluesceens were actually caused by bad ram. I returned the cheap ram I had got, and brought 2gb of high quality (kingmax) ram which turned my pc into the most stable machine I've ever used. Instead of shutting down when I go to bed I tell it to sleep and I normally only reboot once a month or so for updates.

As for overheating... are you overclocking anything? If so go back to stock values/voltages and try. And take the case off your pc and vacumn any dust and crap out of your cpu and graphics card heatsinks. Corrupted graphics is a sure sign of an overheating or dying video card.

Hope this helps, let us know how you go.

[johnno74]

Also:

Originally Posted by flag4

it could be that the dual core is struggling. if it is 1.8 per core it will probably only be using the one - not both at 3.6 ( ?? )

This makes no sense. His machine is a 1.8ghz dual core machine. SH3 is a single threaded app so dual core won't help much at all, but a 1.8ghz cpu is TONS for sh3.

Originally Posted by flag4

is it vista or xp - i've heard of people struggling with sh3 and vista. posts and threads are here at this forum.

I play SH3 on vista, and I have had no problems, except for finding decent video card drivers. I've read installing can be a problem, but I just copied the whole program files\SH3 directory on my old machine over to vista and it worked great

Originally Posted by baggygreen

Next, the only thing i can think of with regards your CTDs that might help in the immediate future is to set SH3 to run as a high priority program through task manager

Unfortunately this is another false performance "tweak". Unless you are ripping DVDs or something silly while playing SH3 increasing the process priority will make no difference at all.

[baggygreen]

Originally Posted by johnno74

Unfortunately this is another false performance "tweak". Unless you are ripping DVDs or something silly while playing SH3 increasing the process priority will make no difference at all.

Really? I cant burn or anything else other than sometimes surf the web when i play SH3, and when I upped the priority it brought about an immediate improvement. Maybe i'll just put it down to blind luck then i guess.

[Chock]

A few suggestions, some already pointed out.

It may be the graphics card conking out (had a similar thing happen once to an NVidia pci-X card, and it did exactly the same thing), or the RAM failing. BUT, it could just be either of them not getting adequate cooling, which has several remedies. First make sure all the fans are keeping going, second, clear all the dust off any fans, vents and heat sinks so that the air can circulate, third, make sure that everything is seated properly so that things are not conking out when they warm up and shift position due to expansion.

It could be a software glitch too, with the drivers having corrupted in some way, you could try a few remedies for that. Doing a system restore back to a point when you were not experiencing problems (back up anything vital to a safe place before doing that, as a precaution), reinstalling the graphics card software is another option, as is going to an earlier more stable version of it. A good swing at things with anti-virus and malicious software removal tools probably wouldn't hurt either.

Another somewhat obvious thing to try, is to reinstall SH3, the current installation might just be screwed and have lost some vital file or other. You can back up your save games if you want to keep a campaign going, but try it in default format after a re-install first, to check stability.

Chock