Dutch Cavalry attacking my PC

[GI Jive]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but I have encountered an issue when I click on some of the Dutch land units the game locks up and there is no escape. It seems like the screen image gets frozen. Even when I try Ctrl+Alt+Del, the game screen doesn't disappear, so I am unable to exit without shutting down the computer. I can click on the Windows button next to "Alt" and get the program list to appear but when I click on something like MS Paint I can't see the new program screen - just the frozen WITPAE game screen. I'm playing my own GC mod with a few Iron Man elements thrown in, along with some of my own changes. It is December 1944 - I've played many turns successfully and as long as I never click on these particular units everything else works fine. I know 1st Regt Cavalerie in slot 5801 causes the problem but there may also be one or two other Dutch units that trigger it also. I'm guessing it may have something to do with the devices/upgrades of the Dutch cavalry units, but maybe that has nothing to do with it. There are workarounds - but they are time consuming. I'd post a screenshot but when the problem happens I can't access MS Paint to save one.

I can't find any posts about a similar problem in Iron Man or elsewhere. Any ideas about what might be happening and a fix?

[geofflambert]

First off I'd change to windowed mode (-w) so that you can access the Task Manager to close the game instead of powering off. I'm not sure how MS Paint works but I use Wisdomsoft ScreenHunter and it uses the F6 key as its trigger for screenshots. For the Dutch problem we'd probably need to see the editor file on that unit.

[GI Jive]

First off I'd change to windowed mode (-w) so that you can access the Task Manager to close the game instead of powering off.

Thanks for the tip. I'll start out by trying the windowed mode. With other work I hit "Prt Scr" to create screenshots and it seems to work as long as I can access Paint to paste it & save.

[BillBrown]

It might be missing unit art.

[GI Jive]

Well, it's not resolved, but using the window mode has made testing much easier. I think the problem has something to do with the upgrade paths of some of the devices. I'll keep testing to see if I can pin it down.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

First off I'd change to windowed mode (-w) so that you can access the Task Manager to close the game instead of powering off. I'm not sure how MS Paint works but I use Wisdomsoft ScreenHunter and it uses the F6 key as its trigger for screenshots. For the Dutch problem we'd probably need to see the editor file on that unit.

I do not use windowed mode and always have access to the desktop using the ALT-TAB function.
Your problem does sound like a graphics lock-up. Some amateur guess-work:

Does your video card and PC have a lot of memory?
Are you going a long time between re-starts of the game? Recent discussions of game slow-downs have centred on bleeding memory which causes the RAM of VRAM to fill up with each image it displays - i.e. it sounds like closing the image does not clear the chunk of memory used. So opening a new unit image may have maxed out your memory.

[GI Jive]

I think I fixed the problem. [:)] I double-checked the devices in the Dutch units and updated them all with the "Set Locations" tool. I've tested them all and there have been no screen freezes. I've returned to playing full screen but the Windows mode was invaluable during testing. Without it I would have had to re-boot my PC 5 or 6 times. Thanks for your suggestions.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

First off I'd change to windowed mode (-w) so that you can access the Task Manager to close the game instead of powering off. I'm not sure how MS Paint works but I use Wisdomsoft ScreenHunter and it uses the F6 key as its trigger for screenshots. For the Dutch problem we'd probably need to see the editor file on that unit.

Why not WIndows snipping tool. Been around since Windows 8.