Constant Crash

[morganbj]

I bought this game about ten days ago, after reading the forums a year or so, and admiring the game materials from the website. I waited until I had enough sheckles to buy it.

At first it worked fine. I played the tutorial for a few turns, and then tried scenario 15 for maybe ten turns or so. When I started a new game, however, things began to go wrong. I played maybe five turns and the game crashed. It was right after I pushed the "end of planning phase" arrow.

Then, it worked for, maybe, 5 turns and crashed. Then three turns, then two, and now every turn.

It now crashes to a complete reboot evey second time I push the above button. What this means is that if, after a reboot, I load my saved game it will crash, not the first time I push the button, but the second, when the operations phases and my subsequebnt planning phase are over. (I always save when my planning is done, and again when the turn passes to me. I've only played as the allied side so far.)

I tried to exit WITP after saving my planning, and then reload the scenario, but unless I reboot manually, it crashes when the scenario is loading.

So, I only get one complete turn on a fresh reboot.

I love the game, but I'm getting very frustrated with it. And yes, I made a complete uninstall and reinstalll of the game 1.6 with the latest comprehensive update of 1.804 I believe.

I guess it could be a memory leak deep in the code that overwrites some system memory somewhere, but why it took a few turns before showing up baffles me.

I'm in serious need of help.

[rtrapasso]

Not sure what is happening, but it MIGHT be a corruption in the gamefile itself.

If you are playing against the AI, you might want to consider a restart. Usually i keep each turnfile saved to avoid problems like this - i.e., you can back up a few turns to where you KNOW things were okay and go from there.

Once glitch that was supposed to have been fixed in association with ending a turn - specifically, after saving a turn, if you hit "back" then you could get a crash to desktop. This supposedly was fixed.

[morganbj]

Well, I've tried that. Now, no matter what I do, even reinstalling witp, my machine reboots once I've hit the "end of planning button," after the first hit of that button. That means I get one AI planning phase -- the next planning phase for the AI, it reboots my machine. Here's the sequence ....

Crash -- and automatic Reboot

Enter WITP

Load Scenario

I make my plans (as Allied side)

Save game

Hit end of planning button

Operations phases happen properly

New planning phase begin

I Save game

I make all my plans.

I save game.

At this point, no matter what I do, I have to reboot before I can get the AI to continue. If I exit the game, and try to reenter and load the last save of the scenario. it reboots on load up of the saved game. If I just hit the end of planning button, my machine thinks for a few seconds, then crashes to a reboot. I just MUST reboot, either voluntarily, or involuntarily, before I can get hte AI to plan for the next turn, after which I get the operatiosn phase and a planning phase, but that's all. Reboot time!

Sorry, that's makes no sense. Could it be that something deep in the code is overwriting a system file in memory somewhere.

BTW, I'm stock WITP, latest patch, 1.8 ghz XP, 512 meg ram, 8 gigs free disck space.

Everything else on my machine runs fine. [&:]

[soloje1]

I had problem of CTD , I chave changed the name of sound et video directory ( to avoid to use it) and now game run fine .
test that perhaps

I think my issue is Sound problem because I' m using the mother board soud card and a SB PCI sound card in addition, and you ?

[rtrapasso]

Yes - sound cards issues can cause CTD, but it seems a bit unusual that it would work for a while and then stop, although perhaps there are different "calls" made by the program in the different scenarios...

If the problem persists, you can rename the SOUND subdirectory NOSOUND to test this out.

[morganbj]

Well, gentlemen, at first I was surprised to find that the sound issue seemed to be the problem. I renamed the folder, updated my soundcard driver just in case, and wham!, it worked for two days. I was able to play maybe eight or nine turns over two days with no problem. [:D]

Then, today CRASH! [:@]

Same sequence.

I loaded the main program, opened the save file, made all my plans for the day, and hit the end of phase button. Ops went well.

I then made the second planning phase, and when I pushed the end of phase button (again, after the second planning phase), waiting for maybe 30 seconds, CRASH! Automatic reboot. [:@][:@][:@][:@]

Same behavior as before.

I did discover, as I tested this the other night, that if I exitied the main program after every turn, it runs ok. It just takes so long to exit and reload everthing. That tells me that it's not in the save file, but rather the main program. It's like there's a memory leak that overwrites some system memory somewhere and exiting the main program retuns all the memory to Windows. I don't know. [&:]

There has to be a reason for this. Are there any known problems with services or programs running in the background (e.g., McAfee)? I've turned off everything I think I can, but the McAfee stub is impossible to remove, at least as far as I can figure. I've tried everything including turining it off using the task manager, but it just reloads itself. Uninstalling it is not an option. Besides. I don't know why there would be any conflict that would cause a reboot in the first place.

[rtrapasso]

Haven't heard of anything like this before - what OS are you using??

[morganbj]

XP Service pack 2.

[rtrapasso]

Hmmmm..... well, i don't know what the problem is off hand... how much memory do you have? (WITP is a memory hog...)

[morganbj]

I'm stock WITP, latest patch, 1.8 ghz XP, 512 meg ram, 8 gigs free disk space.  Should I also add dxdiag output?
 
 

[Local Yokel]

The symptoms suggest to me a hardware fault, in particular the fact that the crash forces a re-boot. Faulty memory might be the cause: perhaps the game is progressively grabbing more memory until it encounters a corrupted area of the memory sticks.  That would suffice to crash the o/s as well.
 
Can you get the same crash by stressing the memory by means of other applications - e.g. loading multiple, big images?  If so, it would strongly suggest the game installation itself is fine and that the problem lies elsewhere.
 
My two penn'orth, for what they're worth.
 
 
 
 

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

The symptoms suggest to me a hardware fault, in particular the fact that the crash forces a re-boot. Faulty memory might be the cause: perhaps the game is progressively grabbing more memory until it encounters a corrupted area of the memory sticks.  That would suffice to crash the o/s as well.

Can you get the same crash by stressing the memory by means of other applications - e.g. loading multiple, big images?  If so, it would strongly suggest the game installation itself is fine and that the problem lies elsewhere.

My two penn'orth, for what they're worth.

This actually sounds reasonable... the computer is SUPPOSED to check out memory on boot, but perhaps it is a fault that occurs when the machine heats up or something... there are probably freeware memory diagnostics you can download that might give a better idea of what is going on.

[morganbj]

I don't have problems with any other software and I use many memory hogs such as Photoshop, Nero, Pinnacle, etc.  Yesterday, I bought a registry cleaner/defragger and cleaned up my registry and then played four (maybe five) turns without a problem.
 
I'll try looking at my memory to see if that's the problem.
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

This is very strange indeed... I don't recall people having problem like you have before...

BTW, did you try to rename the sound and video folder just as Robert (i.e. "rtrapasso") suggested?


Leo "Apollo11"

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

Also, few more questions...

What graphics card you have (is it on-board or separate PCI / PCI Express / AGP)?

What sound card you have (is it on-board or separate PCI)?


Leo "Apollo11"

[morganbj]

Soundcard is an SiS 7012 Wave
Video chipset is the SiS 650
 
Both are OEM.  I have no superduper video or sound card boards.  The only thing I've added is a USB2 boad and some additional memory, both about three years ago.
 
While looking at the dxdiag screens I noticed that I have my sound acceleration set to max.  As I recall, lowering it helps with problems like this.  True?
 
If you want to see any part of the dxdiag data, I can do so.
 
BTW, after scanning and degragging my registry, I've not crashed.  BUT, thus is what it did before.  Just as I felt like everything was fine, it started again.  So, we'll see what heppens.

[morganbj]

And yes, I renamed both my video and sound folders.  That's what worked the first time.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan

Soundcard is an SiS 7012 Wave
Video chipset is the SiS 650

Both are OEM. I have no superduper video or sound card boards. The only thing I've added is a USB2 boad and some additional memory, both about three years ago.

BTW I think that you have on-board integrated graphics and sound (i.e. on motherboard) and not separate cards - this is nice for office environment (i.e. writing documents and doing standard business applications) but very very bad for playing games! [:(]

And yes... that might be the culprit... but you have no way of fixing it other than change PC...

While looking at the dxdiag screens I noticed that I have my sound acceleration set to max. As I recall, lowering it helps with problems like this. True?

This used to help in the past with not state-of-the-art parts - it's worth a try (similar thing can be done for video acceleration)!

BTW, after scanning and degragging my registry, I've not crashed. BUT, thus is what it did before. Just as I felt like everything was fine, it started again. So, we'll see what heppens.

Best of luck!


Leo "Apollo11"

[Charbroiled]

I had a similar problem a couple of years ago. I finally traced my problem to a faulty power supply. After playing for awhile, the computer would heat up and cause the power supply to turn off then turn back on (kind of like a power spike). This, of course, would cause my system to reboot.

Programs like Excel, Words, etc. would not have any problem. Usually it would crash when I was using high graphic games. I don't think Photoshop is as high of a graphic hog as games are, but I could be wrong. I had an intergrated video card at the time.

[morganbj]

That's interesting.  I've experienced lockups when that happens at work so it may be possible.  It has been hotter than the dickens here lately.
 
Oddly enough, I've had no crashes since I cleaned my registry -- maybe twenty game days or so (turns).  There were hundreds of null values from uninstalled programs and bad file paths, etc.  None should have had any effect on WITP, but who knows?  Windows is Windows and things that shouldn't have any effect sometimes do, and in strange ways.
 
So for now, It's doing fine.  I'm going to test renaming the sound folder back to its original name to see if I start having problems again.  I didn't think that it would matter since that was supposedly fixed with 1.2 or 1.3.  If it works, then it was something in my registry.  (I recently uninstalled MS Studio that has Visual Basic, C#, and Java#.  Something tells me that was the culprit since it has a windows debugger as part of the package that intercepts all kinds of errors from executables.  I did that the day before I started having problems.)
 
Thanls for all the ideas.  I think I'll end up getting another box in a few months since this one is getting on in age.  Then all I'll have to worry about is Vista.  Good grief!