"Boink" noise on exit

[Johnus]

Just had hard drive wiped clean and windows re-installed, XP sp3. Re-installed COGEE. On exiting game, I get a window error "noise." Game seems to run otherwise OK. I did not have this problem before under sp2. Anyone know what this is.

[Johnus]

Any help on this error indication upon exiting the game ?? I want to play this game, but I don't want to mess up my PC. I just went through that.

[Johnus]

I think I found the answer on another forum, but I'm kind of disappointed that I got no response at all here.

[montesaurus]

Hi Johnnie,
Sorry you didn't get a response! I would have responded but had no idea what was causing the problem!

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: Johnnie

I think I found the answer on another forum, but I'm kind of disappointed that I got no response at all here.

I was out of town for a conference and had no internet connection until late on Jan. 10. Yesterday I saw your post and sent the URL to EricBabe so he could respond today. Normally we're faster to respond, but these were unusual circumstances. We apologize for the delay, and obviously are glad that you resolved the situation.

[Johnus]

montesaurus and Gil R.:

Thanks for responding. Apparently, according to a previous thread, this noise is caused by a "memory deallocation error," or error reading, due to a deallocation out of order, which occurs, or is detected by, perhaps 1 in 15 systems. Memory does "apparently" actually deallocate properly. And the error is "apparently" benign. I have been advised elsewhere that, even assuming memory were being improperly deallocated (which apparently is not actually happening) it would simply mean that some memory would be tied up until the next reboot. No biggie.

Permit me to suggest, however, that this bug be fixed. It is annoying and gives the impression of an unfinished product or sloppy work (which I, who am a very big fan of this game and Forge of Freedom, know is the furthest thing from the truth.) I appreciate the attention to detail and the obvious love of the subject matter evidenced by these games. But having this "error" indication every time the game is exited is akin to having a beautiful, expensive, hand-made automobile which makes a loud (but harmless) clang when one shuts down the engine.

[Randomizer]

Hadn't seen this until now.  I think that what you are hearing is the XP Critical Stop sound something that I have heard a lot of in a number of applications since installing SP3.  Regularly with FoF and CoG-EE but also Outlook, M$ EXCEL and M$ Word.  I have no idea if it signifies a real problem or not, have had a lot of irritating dropping out of programs to desktop (not CTD just minimizing the running program) and stuff like that.  Perhaps you are seeing something similar.

[Johnus]

Randomizer:

According to the thread I mention, this specific problem occurs with Vista, and XP SP2 and SP3. It appears to be in the program, not a problem with the operating system. Ericbabe states that it was present in FOF but corrected there.

[Johnus]

ericbabe:

Have you given up on trying to locate this bug?

[ericbabe]

It's hard to fix a bug that doesn't happen on any of my systems.  I do occasionally find small (and harmless) deallocation errors, and I fix them as I find them.

[Johnus]

Thanks for the response. Since it is harmless, it is a rather minor annoyance I can live with. You guys have raised the bar with FOF and this game. Can't we now demand perfection ??

[Pistachio]

Not sure if it's related or not, but FYI to Matrix - I get this noise sometimes, too. Annoying but not really a worry - except that today I got the following error message:

Debug Assertion Failed!

Program: ...Matrix Games\Crown of Glory Emperor's Edition\Crown of Glory II.exe
File: thrdcore.cpp
Line: 830

For information on how your program can cause an assertion failure, see the Visual C++ documentation on asserts.

(Press Retry to debug the application)

[ABORT] [RETRY] [IGNORE]

Man, you gotta love Windows. Nothing like plain English to dispel the mists. Especially when it involves looking something up in "documentation" I know nothing about apart from the fact that Visual C++ is what is running the game. Pressing "Ignore" simply triggers the noise again and does nothing. "Abort" closes to the COGEE game menu. "Retry" is useless (at least it always has been when other programs have done this).

On that note, I think this used to happen either with WITP or with FOF, can't remember which. Probably a "dead herring" but I think it went away after I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling to C:\...\Program Files\Matrix instead of directly to C:\ as prompted by every Matrix installer I've ever used. I don't ever install directly to C folder and Matrix software is the only software I know of that installs there by default. And I always forget to change it.

Anyway - not complaining, just passing along the error message and thinking aloud.

Cheers!