Game freezes.

[stoic_steve]

Hi,

I enjoy CM immensely but I have an intermittant game freeze problem that has always occured since i bought it a few weeks ago. This spoils the game and means I cant do ip games as it locks up after ten minutes or so.

I am running Win 98, 192 Mb ram, Maxigamer Xentor 32 (TNT2 card). I have just installed Directx 8a and the problem has happened again after less than an hour. I dont have any other things running (well I have some in the taskbar)

The game just freezes. I can move the mouse pointer on the game screen, but when I click I get a 'ping' sound which I have experienced when clicking on something that is not available.

I have got an error message as follows.

COMBAT MISSION caused an invalid page fault in

module D3DIM.DLL at 015f:566714f1.

Registers:

EAX=89d7db20 CS=015f EIP=566714f1 EFLGS=00010206

EBX=04d5c144 SS=0167 ESP=00a7f310 EBP=00a7f32c

ECX=89d5e5a8 DS=0167 ESI=89d6ba60 FS=323f

EDX=89d5dea8 ES=0167 EDI=89d5d080 GS=0000

Bytes at CS:EIP:

8b 46 34 85 c0 75 03 8b 46 3c ff 70 04 57 e8 e0

Stack dump:

00000048 89d5df9c 89d5d090 89d5e650 89d5e5a8 89d7db20 00000000 00a7f4d0 5666bad5 00000000 89d5d080 00000004 5666bef6 89d5d080 89d8020c 89d78760

which is probably too specific.

I think its a graphics problem.

Sometimes I get back to the desktop and other times I have to reboot windows.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Stephen.

[stoic_steve]

More details of my system here.

Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 Properties

Graphics Processor: NVIDIA RIVA TNT-2

Bus Type: AGP

BIOS Version: 2.05.900

On-Board Memory: 32 MB SDRAM

Driver Version info

Display Driver: 4.11.01.0130

DirectDraw Driver: 4.11.01.0130

OpenGL Driver: 4.11.01.0130

Total memory 195,892 KB

Free memory 83,924 KB

Adapter.

Manufacturer: Guillemot Corporation

Features: DirectDraw 1.00

Software version: 4.0

Curent files: nv4disp.drv,*vdd,nvmini.vxd,NV4DD32.DLL

Thanks,

Stephen.

[Schrullenhaft]

The error seems to indicate that CM is having a problem with DirectX's Direct3D layer. I'm not absolutely familiar with NVidia's internal driver numbering scheme, but you may want to upgrade your video driver from either NVidia or Guillemot.

Reactorcritical's download section (go to TNT/TNT2/GeForce section - make sure you get drivers for the proper OS):

http://www.reactorcritical.com/download.shtml

You may want to try the latest drivers from Guillemot first however:

Guillemot Xentor 32 drivers:

http://us.guillemot.com/support/readtechnote.php3?id=561

I would suggest reinstalling DirectX 8.0a first and then whichever video driver you choose.

It's strange that everything will work for quite awhile and then you'll get a lock up on an intermittent basis. It's possible that new drivers can address this problem, but something else may be the issue here. Do you get intermittent lockups with any other programs, especially DirectX games ?

[ 04-16-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[stoic_steve]

Schrullenhaft,

Thanks for your swift and helpful reply!

(I am using the latest version of CM by the way, v1.12)

I installed the Guillemot drivers after Direct x 8.0a and all went well for half an hour, then it locked up. Same thing, game freezes, but ambient sounds still going, and clicking the mouse gives a 'ping' from Windows.

I downloaded the TNT2 drivers you suggested which gave me lots of files and an .inf file.

I know I have the use this on a 'have disk' button but where is it?

I will try another Directx game tonight and see if it has the problem.

One other factor is that I have recently moved the PC and put its case back on, so it might also be overheating, or perhaps the external speaker is too close causing interference.

Is my kit good enough to run the game? I have a Celeron 300a overclocked to 450Mhz, 256mhz ram, so its equivalent to a PII at 450Mhz.

I have installed no mods to the game.

I am considering getting a new motherboard with a Ghz Athlon which is likely to fix it I suppose.

I will post back here how I get on but if you have any comments on the above, then please post them!

Thanks

Stephen.

[Schrullenhaft]

You should be able to run the game fairly well with a Celeron 300A. Overclocking it might be the cause of your problems however. What heatsink/fan combo are you using to cool your overclocked Celeron ? While it will be a bit irritating to lose the speed, you may want to clock down your Celeron and see if this makes any differences to CM's stability. CM uses a lot of floating point math and I'm under the impression that the floating point unit of many CPUs is prone to having more problems with overclocking that the standard registers/integer portion of those CPUs.

Celeron's have been overclocked safely for quite awhile now. But I have seen situations where CM isn't as stable with an overclocked CPU as it normally would be.

For the NVidia Reference drivers... There is a readme that comes with the drivers that tells you to setup your video card as a "Standard PCI SVGA" adapter and then change the adapter (after whatever reboots are required) using the new NVidia drivers. There is an .INF file (nvagp.inf) wherever you extracted your drivers that will have the appropriate install info to select your adapter.

Do you know if your sound card and video card share an IRQ ? On occasion that can cause some problems. You can check on this by going to Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Utilities > System Information applet > click on Hardware Information and then Conflicts/Sharing. It may take awhile for the list to come up. Ignore the "IRQ Holder for PCI Sharing" enteries since they'll come up for every PCI device you have. Check to see if your sound card and video are sharing an IRQ. While sharing isn't "illegal" under Windows, it can cause the occasional problem and it is best if these two devices didn't share an IRQ for playing CM.

[stoic_steve]

The Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 and the Creative SB Live! do share IRQ 11.

Whats the easy way to split this sharing?

I did take the side off my pc and the game lasted for longer but eventually froze in the same way.

Have not changed to the other drivers yet.

Thanks,

Stephen.

[Schrullenhaft]

Changing a device's IRQ unfortunately isn't an easy affair. If you're lucky, then your CMOS/BIOS setup will allow you to assign the IRQ to each PCI/AGP slot/device. Only so many motherboards actually support such a feature. The other way would be to physically move the SB Live PCI card to another slot (it is most likely in the PCI slot next to the AGP video card at the moment).

Even if you change the PCI slot or change the IRQ setting in the CMOS/BIOS setup, you may still get the same IRQ as before for the SB Live. This is part of Window's functionality in an attempt to keep the configuration the same and working (of course this only seems to happen when you don't want it to - when you'd like something to stay the same in Windows there seems to be a greater chance that it will change). To avoid this you may have to uninstall the SB Live drivers (and any other Creative Labs software that controls settings for it) before you change the IRQ. That way it will be forced to redetect the card and use the new IRQ. One other thing you may have to do in your CMOS/BIOS setup is to turn off the PNP OS setting in your CMOS/BIOS. It may go by a different name, but its functionality is to allow Windows to change the IRQ assignments instead of staying strictly with the PNP BIOS assignment of IRQs. Usually PNP OS is a good thing, but sometimes it can interfere with what you want to do.

If your CMOS/BIOS setup doesn't offer the capability of assigning IRQs to each PCI slot, then you'll be force to use the physical slot swapping method. If your SB Live is in the PCI slot next to the AGP, then you'll most likely have to move it anyway. Changing the IRQ for the first PCI slot will also change the AGP's IRQ (and causing nothing but headaches - and still not resolving your problem). You'll want to find your motherboard manual (or online PDF of it) to find out what the scheme of PCI IRQ sharing is. Typically the PCI and AGP slots will share 4 IRQs between them. This includes devices on the PCI bus like onboard audio, USB ports, onboard network adapters, etc. Typically the PCI slot closest to the AGP slot (and sometimes the next PCI slot too) will share an IRQ with the AGP adapter. The last PCI slot (away from the AGP slot) will often share an IRQ with the USB or other onboard device. What you want to do is find a PCI slot that isn't sharing an IRQ with another device at the moment (or a device that is rarely used). Otherwise you may run into a similar problem with the sound card (which is pretty busy in CM) and another device.