Matrix Games Forums

Heya all,

I'm semi-illiterate at computers, so I'm unsure how to fix this issue on my own. Every time I begin the game, it runs for a minute, two minutes, sometimes even three, before crashing to the desktop and giving me a memory read error at location 0x086dbc14.

What does this mean? Is my computer about to spit out its parts at me? More importantly, how can I address this and continue playing WitP?

It's a bit of an older computer, but I've never had problems playing the game before. Now, all of a sudden...

Pentium 3 1.13
256 MB RAM
nVidia GeForce2 Go MX
Win XP Pro SP2
ESS Maestro

(this is a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop)

What else do you need to know? Any help would be great, thanks!

First of all, just as a test, load a different scenario and see if it runs a turn to completion.

It is entirely possible that the PC is having read errors in memory. To fix that you would need to know which memory module is bad, and replace it. It doesn't happen very often, but I have had it happen to me. This is what it sounds like might be happening.

Places that sell memory often have memory testers - they drop the simms/rimms in and run diagnostics on them. They'll show the bad one in a few seconds at most. That being a laptop, it might be a little more difficult to deal with. Either you've got to take it apart yourself, have a friend do it, or find a store/repair center you have confidence in to bring it to.

The game does have some bugs where it crashes, but it does not say 'memory read error', It just crashes straight out of the game to the desktop, and Windows comes up with a message box reporting that 'the application has crashed, do you want to report it to Microsoft?'

Now, it is possible that your hardware is fine and that's the reason for testing another scenario. What scenario are you running when it crashes? Is it the first turn you're running or have you gotten part way into the game?

By the way, Windows XP, and certainly this game, will run a lot faster with more than 256MB of memory.

PS: I am a little surprised that Windows XP would not crash on it's own, or the PC even boot with only 256MB of memory if some of it were bad. Still, it might be bad memory. Just make sure to test some other things before you tear apart your PC. Windows XP uses a lot of memory, so I would have thought other things would already run into any bad memory. On the other hand, maybe WITP is the only thing you are running that will take a huge amount of memory? It is a hog.

(I've been trying and trying but I can't suppress the urge to say this any longer.)
 

  I think I broke it...

 
You shouldn't have bent it like that.
 
*rimshot*

[:D][:D][:D][:D]

Hey thanks for the quick replies, guys... and the joke... ahem...[;)]

So believe it or not I figured out the problem. I was installing the game (via the installer) from a CD instead of copying/pasting the install file to the hard drive. For whatever reason that led to the problem. Did the c/p procedure and all is well (hell?) in the Pacific.

Love and nuggets!