Random crashes in CMBO.

[Incoming9000]

I'm getting constant random crashes during gamplay in CMBO all the time. Sometimes I get the blue screen other times I hear the windows error sound and the game freezes. When I press escape, or any other key, it goes back to Desktop.

I've changed drivers, fiddled with BIOS settings but nothing works. Sometimes I can play for several minutes other times it crashes within seconds or just a few minutes.

My system is an Athlon 2100XP, VIA K133A Mobo with VIA 4in1 4.49, 768Mb RAM, FX5600 using 45.23 drivers, SB Live! Value on driver 5.12.2.252 and DX9B.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[ October 21, 2003, 10:22 PM: Message edited by: Incoming9000 ]

[Moon]

I am moving this to the Tech Support forum.

Martin

[Schrullenhaft]

Have you made any adjustments to your memory timings in the CMOS/BIOS setup ? The error dings in CM usually indicate something wrong with data (usually). This makes me feel that something is wrong with your memory. However if that were the case, you would probably have problems with other large applications (that have a lot of data).

This could also be a heat issue. 3D games like CM can put more demand on the video card and CPU than the OS alone (or other 2D programs). CM utilizes 100% of the CPU cycles (or whatever is left when it loads). 3D video cards up their electrical current draw when 3D games are loaded (and more ciruitry comes into use) which can cause a previously stable video card to overheat if it isn't properly cooled. You may want to open up your case and examine your CPU, video and case fans to make sure that they're spinning properly. Leave the cover off temporarily to see if this helps at all with CM's crashing.

Do you have anything else loaded up in the background while you're playing CM ? I suggest unloading any anti-virus utilities (not uninstalling them though), any instant messaging clients, etc.

[Incoming9000]

It's not over heating I am certain of that. My CPU rarely get's above 55ºC in extreme workload, 47ºC to 49ºC in normal operation with lows at 45º. I have 3 8cm fans, one double slot heat extractor for the GFX card and a double fan heatsink for the CPU. Heat is not an issue here, I belive.

I tried changing GFX drivers: 44.03, 45.23 and 45.32, the Via 4in1s, currently on 4.49, disabling the Norton ATV, removing unecessary background apps, checking the BIOS, and installing the VIA latency patch. Nothing changed.

I use other memory intensive programs, Like FS9, IL2 FB and none gives me any problems.

Basically I'm stuck.

[ October 22, 2003, 06:12 PM: Message edited by: Incoming9000 ]

[Schrullenhaft]

Is your CMBO installation 'modded' ? If it is, then perhaps one of your mods is causing the problem (a sound file or a set of bitmaps).

When you get a blue screen do you remember what the error is (assuming that it is consistent) ?

Do you have FSAA on ? Are you using any tweaker programs on your video driver ?

[Incoming9000]

It's not just CMBO, CMBB also has the same problem, and about modding, none of them are modded.

No FSAA either. I know It causes problems so I have it disabled. I do have the anisotropic filtering on but it doesn't make any diference because the problem still happens with it off.

I did notice that wen the blue screen shows up, more often than not, the file nv4_disp.dll appears as where the problem occured with a "Page_fault_in_nonpaged_area" message. Still it doesn't mean it's that particular file that is causing the problem.

Update: I updated my drivers to 52.16 WHQL and still the same error with the same file. I don't think it's the drivers. A tleast not directly. I belive it's something with the PCI buffer.

[ October 22, 2003, 09:29 PM: Message edited by: Incoming9000 ]

[Schrullenhaft]

Reduce the 'hardware accleration' for your sound card in the DirectX Diagnostic's 'Sound1' tab. If you believe that this is a PCI Buffer error, then this might help.

Another suggestion is within CM to turn off sound completely or at least the 'ambient' sound. The idea here is to send less data to the sound card (over the PCI bus) and see if this makes any difference (often it doesn't unfortunately).

[ October 23, 2003, 05:51 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Incoming9000]

I tried reducing the hardware accel, the sample quality and disabeling the sound in the game. None worked.

I've also defragmented my HD checked for error reainstalled GFX, VIA 4in1, DX9B and Sound Drivers.

Nothing worked.

The blue screem shows the error 0X00000005 which the CM support says it's a corrupted DX file. But after reinstalling all drivers the problem persists.

Thanks for all the help but I'm still stuck! Danm!

Is there anyone else with a same or similar problem?

[ October 23, 2003, 06:38 PM: Message edited by: Incoming9000 ]

[Schrullenhaft]

When you 'change' your video drivers do you uninstall the previous version and then reboot before installing the new set ?

Which KT133A motherboard do you have and what are your CMOS/BIOS AGP settings for it ?

Are you overclocking your video card with any 'tweaker' utilities ? Sometimes CM doesn't respond so well to overclocked video cards (memory and/or core), where other game may work OK. Are any of your other games running in a Direct3D mode (rather than OpenGL) ?

[Incoming9000]

Yes, I use Nasty File Remover before installing new drivers.

My mobo is a Soltek SL-75KAV With a VIA Apollo KT133A Series Chip.

I've disabled all shadowing and caching, PCI Pipelining, P2C/C2P Concurrency, Fast R-W Turn arround, CPU to PCI Write Buffer, PCI Dynamic Bursting, PCI Master 0 WS Write, PCI Delay Transaction, PCI#2 Access #1 Retry, AGP Master 1 WS Write and Read. The AGP has a 64MB apperture and it's in 4X mode.

I've fiddled them and altered the settings a few times and nothing changed.

I use FS9 to check and see if DX works, and it does, flawlessly. I havent had a crash yet in FS9, so I belive this as nothing to do with drivers at least not the display drivers.

My guess is that it must be the Live! board. The drivers are a year old and there aren't any new drivers available for it. I seems Creative has stoped developing the Live! series drivers and concentrated on the Audigy series.

[Incoming9000]

According to the CMBO and CMBB FAQs the errors I've been encountering are caused by a corrupt file in DX so I decided to download the full DirectX 9.0b SDK in the hope that It would make a complete reinstallation of all DX files in my system rather than a upgrade from previous version. Besides since the SDK also has several apps that the retail verion doesn't have, I migh find out something more about what's wrong.

I installed it, but still no good. FS9, a DX intensive game, works flawlessly and according to DX diag all's well with my system, but I'm still getting random CTDs and blue screens of death.

Could this be caused by DX9b?

Could there be something in the new relese that causes incompatibility with CMBO and CMBB?

Does anyone else have DX9b installed? Does it work?

[ October 24, 2003, 05:53 PM: Message edited by: Incoming9000 ]

[easytarget]

i'm using 9b with no problems, so not sure that's the problem - course i have different hardware

have you considered irq issues?

i've had the same problem you're describing and it came down to an irq conflict - the sound card and NIC were sharing the same irq and didn't play nicely together

i moved the NIC to another slot and this resolved the problem

up to that point everyone helping me diagnose it were convinced it was heat related because of the bsod descriptions i was posting

just a thought (since it appears you've tried a whole lot of the other options - drivers being the other obvious choice)

[Incoming9000]

After having exausted all other options I decided to simply remove my SBLive! Value and, for the first time, use the onboard sound capabilities of my mobo.

The sound works great and honestly I can't really notice any diference from before, but I did notice something very interesting. The crashes almost dissapeared completly.

They still occur ocasinally but not within minutes or seconds as before. Now it can take an hour or even more.

After some research I discovered that my mobo chipset, the Via Apollo KT-133A with the VT82C686B south bridge, has a know bug that occasionally can cause crashes in certain circumstances. This seems to occur more oftem in conjuction with Nvidia and SBlive Boards.

This does bug does not occur with every program as it depends on certain specific conditions making hard to determine what is causing it. It is common for it to make it look like the issue lies with either the GFX card or the Sound Board as the error occurs when there's exchange of data within the PCI bus using those peripherals.

Without the SBLive the problem is now much less notisable and since it only afftes CMBO and CMBB, at least for me, I will leave things as they are, at least for now.

Thanks for all the help!