Crash...!

Dedas · Post by **Dedas** » Sun Sep 30, 2001 1:15 am

I had the game running all day and suddenly it just bounced back into windows.
Why!
Did the memory run out or what?
I thought that the game flushed the memory from time to time or am I wrong?

SPWAW seem to get more and more unstable after each new version! (it does get better and better though!!)

Can someone please explain what I am doing wrong...!?

This isn't criticism to the game, it's just a question... don't get it wrong! <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Sun Sep 30, 2001 1:29 am

Depends on your OS, What OS are you running - Windows itself gets more and more unstable as time goes on, if you do not take it down and reinstall it about every 6 months or so, it will eventually get worse irrespective of SP:WaW.

Win 2k is much better, Win XP Pro will finally be "long term stable" thought the home version will be pretty good too.

Folks bash the the thing, but stability wise and for compatibility with past DOS and win 3.1 stuff, it is a minor miracle...

Khan7 · Post by **Khan7** » Sun Sep 30, 2001 1:29 am

Well, for starters as you said you had the game running ALL DAY, which is usually a surefire way to get ANY program to start messing things up. Windows is a buggy piece of shiznik, what can I say?

Anyway, it would be advisable to SAVE every once in a while, even if you were using a rock-solid OS like Linux.

But I understand the frustration

. All I can say is save occasionally.

Matt

Kharan · Post by **Kharan** » Sun Sep 30, 2001 12:18 pm

SPWAW's stability is better now than it ever has been. Those random crashes when saving a map or a scenario went away completely a few versions back.

jambo1 · Post by **jambo1** » Sun Sep 30, 2001 4:32 pm

Even with my new kick ass system, I get "sound loops" and the odd out right crash, and sometimes I do run the game all day when I'm on a campaign. That being said this games still ROCKS!!!! <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

jambo1 · Post by **jambo1** » Sun Sep 30, 2001 4:34 pm

This means save every turn at least, must go I heard my troops calling!

Dedas · Post by **Dedas** » Sun Sep 30, 2001 5:37 pm

I guess you are right... I just need to save more often. (but the crashes still annoys me!)

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Mon Oct 01, 2001 12:31 am

Dedas, do you have cacheman? I've downloaded it, and use the setting for all game use for my computer, and it has literally worked miracles!!! Thanks to all the folks out there that recommended it, I too do so now <img src="wink.gif" border="0"> The sound problem with stuttering on my presario 7000US with SB 128 PCI has stopped, and my games all seem to be much more stable, I was plagued with many crashes, very often, but with over 30 games installed, you gotta expect these things to happen occasionally!!!

Dedas · Post by **Dedas** » Mon Oct 01, 2001 10:50 pm

Great!!!
Thank you Warhorse for your tip!

Cacheman worked perfect and completely solved the crashes!

I owe you one Warhorse <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

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If anyone have problems with game crashing down on them... try cacheman! It really works!

[ October 01, 2001: Message edited by: Dedas ]</p>

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Mon Oct 01, 2001 11:00 pm

Dedas, no prob' man, glad it worked for you also!!! Pretty incredible the difference, I was skeptical at first, but VERY happy I decided to try it out! <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

Khan7 · Post by **Khan7** » Tue Oct 02, 2001 7:24 am

I'm lazy.. could someone please provide the addy for cacheman?

Thanx.

Matt

Dedas · Post by **Dedas** » Tue Oct 02, 2001 12:23 pm

Here it is!

Cacheman

Arralen · Post by **Arralen** » Tue Oct 02, 2001 12:43 pm

You needn't install another prog - it's the [vcache] entry in the system.ini that makes most of the difference.

There's simply no entry per default - and that means the Win9x uses up all available RAM after some time just for disk caching.

That isn't that bad with Win98 as it can run apps from the cache, so it appears more stable than Win95 some times.

You may try this out using sysmon.exe that comes with Win9x (if you installed it, what is not a default). It can display "Free RAM" and "RAM used by Cache" .. and you'll notice that Win happily let this grow to 30kB vs. 60MB ..

Add that most progs (and Win itself) have some memory leaks (where Memory is allocated but never freed after usage), you shurely see why a crash is inevitable after some time.

And don't forget that Win9x only runs about 48 hours without restarting because of a little programming bug <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

Hope this sheds some light on the issue ..

A.