Occassional crash to desktop

[Rainbow7]

I've had two crashes to desktop while right-clicking on the lower right of the display (one time on a unit for its pop-up, the other for context-help on a button). I've just reboot my system, to see if it was something that would repeat with a fresh boot. I'll try and get more details next time. Does the program generate error files for such things? I haven't been able to locate one.

[Erik Rutins]

Rainbow,

Let me encourage you now if you haven't already to take the usual system maintenance steps. Update your drivers, check for disk errors, defragment, update DirectX... Those will be the first steps if you crashes continue. In my experience pre-release, BiN has been extremely stable (no crashes) so we would want to make sure you are updated first before ruling out system-specific issues.

Regards,

- Erik

[Fred98]

But how to update drivers?

I don't know anything about my sound card or video card - the computer came without manuals on either of those - and I will not open my box.

[Erik Rutins]

Joe,

Are you also having problems? Updating drivers is just installing software, no need to open anything up. Generally if you go to your computer manufacturer's website, they'll have a support section and that will have an option to download drivers. Check for the ones with the most recent revision/date, download and install.

If you have hardware from a third party manufacturer, such as Nvidia or ATI for video or Creative Labs for graphics, go to their websites and grab the latest drivers for your card. If you're not sure what kind of card you have, you can go into the Device Manager under System in your Control Panel and see what's there - that's generally a detailed enough list to tell you what type of video/sound you have. Another alternative is to go to the Start Menu, choose Run, type in dxdiag and click ok. That will also check your video and sound hardware and driver dates. If you have any doubts, export the DxDiag results to a text file (this is an option you can check in DxDiag) and post it as an attachment here and we'll direct you to the right place.

Updating DirectX - just go to www.microsoft.com/directx and download and install the latest DirectX 9.0c Runtime and you're all set.

Regards,

- Erik

[trcanberra]

I have had the occasional crash as well (see my posts about the tutorial under general discussion - sorry it is in the wrong spot, just found this one).

I have the latest drivers and background tasks disabled.

[alexs]

Hi Guys,
The crashes are odd - i dont think we've had a crash here for the last few months or so (and it got some rigorous testing!). If you send me an email with a dxdiag file (if you go to the folder that normandy is in, you will see a dxdiag_create program - run it, and it will create a dxdiag report. Then, could you send it to me at support@ssg.com.au along with a description of where you crash (reproducible steps if possible but i know it isnt always).

Regards
AlexS

[Rainbow7]

I played for about an hour today and was crash free, but I'll pass along the dxdiag file if I come across another crash.

[Larac]

Just a note be sure your version of Direct X is up to date as well, many time the latest video driver is set for the latest direct X.

If you have trouble seeing what your hardware is go to Device Manager( AKA Device Mangler), it will show you there
These are for XP, ME is very similar

Start
Control Panel
System
Hardware
Device Manager

You can then click on Display Adapter
it will give you the details
Name of Card
Ver of driver

Same for Audio


To provide a system setup for the techs at Matrix, also called a DXDIAG file

Start
Run
DXDIAG
(let it aquire the info)
Save to a place you can remember, I like C:\ or desktop
the file is DXDIAG.TXT
It has all the hardware and drivers installed to help find issues

Hope it heps a little
Lee