Crashing at start

[soapboxalpha]

I was able to play the game for a couple of weeks, but have developed a problem where the game crashes just before the "start of game" menu, every time I play. The blue screen always identifies my display drivers as the problem.

I've tried rolling back display drivers, upgrading to the latest drivers, uninstalling/reinstalling the video card, and removing the game and reinstalling.

The card is a GeForce ti4400, currently with latest drivers. The game is updated to v1.016. The only recent system change was an addition of 1GB of memory, but I was able to play the game for a few days after the memory was installed. I'm currently able to play other games with no problems, so I'm not inclined to believe that the card itself is bad. DxDiag output is attached.

[Erik Rutins]

Soapboxalpha,

Your sound drivers are a bit old, but other than that things look fine.

Did you change any settings in your drivers recently? Try restoring all settings to defaults and turning off any anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to see if that helps at all. Also, a reinstall is something you might consider in case something corrupted the game files.

Can you post the exact error message you are seeing? Thanks.

Regards,

- Erik

[soapboxalpha]

I'm certain the sound drivers aren't the problem--music plays throughout the startup sequence, and all of the crashes have said something about display driver problems.

Nothing changed recently in the drivers. I've did update drivers early on after some crashed during game play, but the game continued to function for several days after that update. Since that time, I've both rolled back the drivers, uninstalled/reinstalled the device entirely, and updated to the latest nvidia drivers released this week. I get the same results. I've disabled AA and AF (both were set to "application controlled" previously), but that hasn't helped. I've already uninstalled/reinstalled the game.

I can't give you an exact message, because the blue screen doesn't stick around, but generally it says something about the display drivers being stuck in an infinite loop, or the display drivers have stopped responding normally.

[soapboxalpha]

Must have been an issue with the card--upgraded to a GeForce 6800 GT and the game runs fine. My banker aint too pleased though...

[Erik Rutins]

Sometimes it does happen that way - eventually, there will be one day when it works and the next day it won't. I had that happen with a fan on a video card breaking, it was fine for desktop work, but as soon as a game gave it a workout it started crashing due to heat. Glad it's sorted out, though I'm sorry it turned out to be a more expensive problem.

Regards,

- Erik