Demo CMBB lock-ups

[Almaniac]

I've tried playing the demo about 5 times now and in every case I encountered an absolutely solid lock-up.

The computer stops responding in any way at all and a single high-pitched tone is heard over the speakers. It seems to be random and not connected to any particular action.

My machine:

AMD Athlon 1.3 GHz

Acer AK73 Pro A motherboard

GeForce 2 MX 32MB

WD 80GB drive

3x512 PC-133 RAM

Windows XP Pro SP1

I'm having exaclly the same problem with the Strategic Command demo although my copy of CMBO works perfectly as does the Airborne Assult demo.

I have already made sure I have the most current VIA drivers and the 30.82 version of the nVidia drivers. I have also disabled 4xAGP and dialed the apeture back to 4MB.

I love the game but I'm not going to plonk down the cash if I can't get the demo running. Please help!

[Schrullenhaft]

So CMBO works fine without lockup, but the CMBB Demo will constantly lockup ?

How come you have your AGP Aperture set to 4Mb ? This will basically turn off the AGP function of storing textures in memory. Are you having problems with it set to any other setting ?

What audio are you using, the onboard AC97 audio ? Have you updated drivers for it ?

AOpen audio drivers (v. 2.84 ?)

Intel download of the ADI 1885 SoundMax drivers

[Almaniac]

Yes, I've never had any trouble with the CMBO (full version) at all, and it's running fine now. But the DEMO still locks up.

As for the AGP, I had it set higher but read another post where you suggested dialing it down, so I tried all the settings (128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4) with no results. BTW, what exaclty does the apeture do?

For sound I have a SoundBlaster Live! with the latest drivers.

[Almaniac]

On a whim I checked with one DIMM at a time. Lo and behold it locks up with two of them and works fine with the other one. I guess it's a hardware problem.

[Schrullenhaft]

Some motherboards have problems when more than one DIMM is installed. The electrical load of the additional memory causes problems on the CPU bus. So quite often it is best to get the largest DIMM you can afford for some motherboards and limit it to two or less DIMMs. In your case you're pretty much near the limit for economically available DDR DIMMs regarding memory size (anything larger is prohibitively expensive).

This problem isn't true of every brand of memory and every motherboard, but with the higher speeds of CPUs and the variability of memory quality, this becomes an issue.

The AGP Aperture setting was recommended for those that were having video problems (driver, interaction with memory or Northbridge chipset). Minimizing the AGP Aperture setting (which many motherboards can't do) cuts off the storage of textures in main system memory. The generally recommended setting is 'half of your system memory', but other sources say this makes little difference. 64, 128 or 256Mb should be fine. The 16Mb and lower settings will typically 'choke off' using system memory for video texture storage.

[ September 26, 2002, 01:22 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Almaniac]

Thanks for the informative reply. I've always wondered what that setting was for, but I have seen all of those memory issues you described many times.

In my case it turned out to be the motherboard that was the culprit. I couldn't get a replacement AK73 Pro A so now I'm running the demo with an ECS K7S5A with 2 512MB PC133 DIMMS. No more lock-ups.

Unfortunatly I now get "Unhandled Exception" errors (I saw you reply to someone else who had the same problem). I can play for awhile before it happens so I've gone ahead and ordered the game. I realise that an exception error is software related so I'm sure you'll eventually patch it (or Microsoft).

Anyway, thanks again!

-Allan