MC crash after game 1

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Mon Jul 23, 2001 12:40 am

Please post here your system config and any other info that might help us track down this problem and know how widespread it is.

Sorry Bren I accidentally deletedyour followup post...

sjohn · Post by **sjohn** » Mon Jul 23, 2001 3:35 am

System stats at end of post. I can't start second battle, even if it's "An Early Set Back" or "A Hard Pressed Battle". Crashes to desktop after hitting "Continue" to start next battle. I hear half second of ambient background gunfire, but it crashes before the battlefield appears. *The only time it has crashed while playing first battle was immediately sfter hitting "Exit" in the Preferences screen*.

Have uninstalled/reinstalled many times. After installing 5.3 and MC from CD-ROM, I run Wild Bill MC Patch from Armor Site. I also delete "mech.exe" before applying 5.3 to 6.1 Patch.

I heard about a workaround involving occaisonally exiting the game and nuking the "steel.prf" file, but haven't tried it. I'm not sure how many times that file should get dumped.

System: PII, 450MHz, 256MB RAM, 40GB H.D., 8MB STB nVidia ZXV AGP (came stock with Dell ca. 1998), 6x CD-ROM, DirectX 8, Win98 (not SE). Can get more system info online if you specify anything you think you need.

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Tue Jul 24, 2001 3:07 am

Had this problem as well, restarted and replayed the first battle. Again, won Decisive victory, and went on to next battle (resistance stiffens?), chose no options this time.

What happened when I started the scenario was intriguing, a scenario start screen (like when you play a regular scenario) appeared, saying "Yugoslavian player". I chose option "Quit orders" and was then returned to MC screen with a decisive victory! I was then able to play the next battle (Pushing hard?), but missed the Mersa Brega battle. The same thing happened after winning a decisive victory in this battle as well.

So, it seems, I will be allowed to play only every two battles?

My hardware configuration is the following:

Intel Pentium II 300 MHz, 128 MB RAM, Riva TNT2 card and a Soundblaster 1024 Soundcard.

I'm running on WIN98 OS, Direct X 8.0, Detonator 2 driver and have SPWAW 6.1 installed over the MCDF.

[ July 23, 2001: Message edited by: Yogi Yohan ]

jhines · Post by **jhines** » Tue Jul 24, 2001 6:05 am

I have the same problems.
System is a Compaq Presario P3 500 256 ram
DX8, Voodoo 5 card, running ME.
I have tried to reload and run the straight 5.3 version from CD, Will post back if that works.

Strix · Post by **Strix** » Tue Jul 24, 2001 6:03 pm

Had the same problem but turned off the soundtrack and then it worked!!!

General Mayhem · Post by **General Mayhem** » Tue Jul 24, 2001 8:30 pm

Originally posted by Strix:
Had the same problem but turned off the soundtrack and then it worked!!!

Didn't work for me, despite I turned all
sound effects off.

But I did discover something instresting. I disabled my soundcard, and after that as tried to enter to Megacampaign in SPAW, it crashed. Tried again, crashed. Allright, I though, maybe disabling the card on fly screwed system, so I'll reboot. I did, but still problem continued until I enabled the soundcard. Note, all my sound effecst were off from the preferences.

Do you happen to have sounblaster/creative sound card? I atleast have.

I wouldn't be surprised if sound card would be to be blamed(maybe along with some software bug related to audio).

[ July 24, 2001: Message edited by: General Mayhem ]

Gallo Rojo · Post by **Gallo Rojo** » Tue Jul 24, 2001 11:53 pm

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:

What happened when I started the scenario was intriguing, a scenario start screen (like when you play a regular scenario) appeared, saying "Yugoslavian player". I chose option "Quit orders" and was then returned to MC screen with a decisive victory! I was then able to play the next battle (Pushing hard?), but missed the Mersa Brega battle. The same thing happened after winning a decisive victory in this battle as well.
[ July 23, 2001: Message edited by: Yogi Yohan ]

Exactly the same thing had happened to me ... the Yugoslavian Player Screen and so on...

I’m running a PIII, 550mzh, 8 G Disk, 128 RAM... I’m not sure about what my video/sound cards are.

Another thing that I have noticed is that MC screen says 5.0 version instead of 6.1, as the game is.

I don’t know is how it should be.

I have installed the last WB MC patch downloaded from Fabio’s site.
I had reinstalled the game ones deleting the mech.exe and the pdrf files.

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Wed Jul 25, 2001 12:43 am

What sound cards do you folks have? THe game requires one - so don't disable the sound card, just turn the sound prefs off.

Did any of you install the MC on top of a previous SP:WaW install?

chandor · Post by **chandor** » Wed Jul 25, 2001 1:28 am

System config
Athlon 700
Soundblaster Live Platinum
Elsa Geforce 2 MX
256 MB Ram

Deleted old installation
installed MCNA
patched to 6.1
patched Sounds
applied MCNA update #2

First scenario decisive victory,
continue leads to yugoslavian player
Start turn has no effect
quit orders exits to desktop, if desktop not at 800x600 system gets to grayscale and hangs terminally if changes are made with reference to the video mode
if desktop at 800x600 16bit, systems seems to recover gracefully
sound preferences all disabled or not, makes no difference

[ July 24, 2001: Message edited by: chandor ]

General Mayhem · Post by **General Mayhem** » Wed Jul 25, 2001 2:05 am

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
What sound cards do you folks have? THe game requires one - so don't disable the sound card, just turn the sound prefs off.

Did any of you install the MC on top of a previous SP:WaW install?

First I did and it was pretty unstable, but as I asked about in the SPWAW forum I re-installed it three times while taking off mech/steel.pref and rebooting after each install. I even deleted the whole SPWAW folders before installing from 5.3/MC -> 6.1. It came after first install stable, but with C&C it still crashes despite three installs. I also installed nr.2 upgrade to
MC each time. I'm pretty convinced my problem with C&C isn't because installation problems . I even upgraded to SP2(Windows 2000) and to DirectX 8 to get it to work with C&C.

It's not exactly same problem from this threat started, but I suspect
reason is same as result is similar. I also suspect sound card is a problem, as it is most error prone.

I have:
Athlon 500
192 MB ram
Soundblaster Live!
Matrox G400 Dual Head Graphics adapter
Asutek motherboard
+ lot other stuff

[ July 24, 2001: Message edited by: General Mayhem ]

chief · Post by **chief** » Wed Jul 25, 2001 4:52 am

To Whomever:
After reading these posts and problems I ran across two short articles that may or may not apply in these cases, I'll post them verbatum for your use (or not).

1. "Tweak your CD-ROM or DVD ROM drive. Some CD-and DVD-ROM settings work better for playing games than watching movies or doing business work. Knowing how to adjust them properly for the task at hand creates smooth performance. Right-click My Computer, select Properties, and select Performance Tab. Click the File System button followed by the CD-ROM tab and make sure the Optimize Access For entry is set at Quad-Speed Or Higher. Changing this to No Read-Ahead can enhance an older drives performance while playing games. Generally, though , it isn't worth the effort if you have a modern CD-ROM or DVD-ROM installed. (Please read on)
The Supplemetal cache Size slider has more impact. Sliding it to the small setting enhances gaming performance at the expense of DVD movie playback"..........etc.

2. "Video card vivacity. If your video card is not on the WinMe compatibility list, your OS might be using default drivers that don't fully utilize your card. The default drivers don't give you full control over your display properties." (this will effect 3-D effects that were not apparent in Win98 with the same cards.)

Both these excerpts were taken from Editorials in "Smart Computing" and are presented here as a possible cure/help to you. HTH

:rolleyes:

Strix · Post by **Strix** » Wed Jul 25, 2001 7:03 pm

Originally posted by General Mayhem:

Didn't work for me, despite I turned all
sound effects off.

But I did discover something instresting. I disabled my soundcard, and after that as tried to enter to Megacampaign in SPAW, it crashed. Tried again, crashed. Allright, I though, maybe disabling the card on fly screwed system, so I'll reboot. I did, but still problem continued until I enabled the soundcard. Note, all my sound effecst were off from the preferences.

Do you happen to have sounblaster/creative sound card? I atleast have.

I wouldn't be surprised if sound card would be to be blamed(maybe along with some software bug related to audio).

[ July 24, 2001: Message edited by: General Mayhem ]

No, I have a TBS Montego soundcard on my computer.

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Thu Jul 26, 2001 1:20 am

THe C&C crash with WIN 2k and WIN NT is a known bug (and one that has us and some thers scratching our heads...why it woks fine on WINME/9x but crashes on WIN2k/NT only Bill G knows for sure...

General Mayhem · Post by **General Mayhem** » Thu Jul 26, 2001 2:44 am

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
THe C&C crash with WIN 2k and WIN NT is a known bug (and one that has us and some thers scratching our heads...why it woks fine on WINME/9x but crashes on WIN2k/NT only Bill G knows for sure...

Well, I've been anyway planning to sue the guy based on mental stress his producs cause.

Now I have the ammo. What I need yet it just few thousands crashes of SPWAW to get one
big crash to my central processor.

AlvinS · Post by **AlvinS** » Fri Jul 27, 2001 5:08 am

Greetings

My system specs are as follows:

Dell Pentium III 500 Mhgz
128 Meg Ram
ATI 3D Rage Pro Video 8 Meg
Creative Soundblaster AWE64 16Bit Audio
6.4 Gig Hard drive with 1.1 Gig free (598 Meg free when crash occured)(I deleted some files to free space just in case)
Win98 Second Edition.

I had just started my 9th scenario of the campaign. I chose the amphibious assault. At the start of the scenario artillery started bombarding my landing craft. After the bombardment the game crashed to the desktop.

I re-started the game and loaded the campaign from the last save. It left me at the screen that you normally see when you start a regular scenario and said I was the Yugoslavian player. I clicked start and it sent me back to the descktop.

One wierd problem occured at the start of the 3rd turn in the 8th scenario. When I loaded the game my F formation of PzIIIE's were invisible with the exception of F4. All of my engineers were invisible also. They appeared in the unit listing as ready. I closed the scenario and reloaded it and they were visible again.

If you need my save game files just drop me an email and I will send them. I will be offline for 2 days starting tomorrow.

Alvins

Drex · Post by **Drex** » Fri Jul 27, 2001 7:19 am

i have an OEM computer, Pentium III, 450MgHz, 64MB RAM, Intel 740 graphics Accel, Win98,DirectX8,SB AudioPCI 64V. Have played opening battle twice and achieved decisive victories, Units are promoted and I go into the next battle. I have chosen 2 different options and the game crashes and resets my computer to "safe mode". I have to re-boot and reset my display.

Don Doom · Post by **Don Doom** » Fri Jul 27, 2001 12:35 pm

Has anyone seen this. I will be playing any battle or scenerio and after two or at the most three turns the game will kick me back to the desktop? I have deleted the steel file twice, killed everything but explorer and it still does it.
completely deleted spwaw and reinstalled twice.
128MB ram
2 10GHDs
AMD 3 500Mhz
voodo 3000 with latest drivers
directx8a
win98sed
soundblaster live.
Any ideas. Cause this makes testing nodes a pain in the @#$%^&.
Don
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Doom

Paul Vebber
Administrator
Member # 24
posted July 15, 2001 10:34 PM
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CTD's are almost always memory manangement errors. I would go into your virtual memeory settings and make sure you have 256MB or swap file space reserved. If you let windows manage your virtual memeory it leads to all sort of problems in my experience.
We are doing a check of teh code for memory leaks and hope to have a "leak resistant" version ready for the MC deployment.

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Posts: 4021 | From: Portsmouth RI | Registered: Mar 2000 | IP: Logged

Don Doom
Matrix Veteran
Member # 1351
posted July 26, 2001 09:12 PM
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Paul, I got tired of 6.0 crashing to desktop. So I went back to 5.1 tried WB's new campaign and it played great no crashes. What gives with 6.0 and above.?
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Doom

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Posts: 583 | From: Bradenton,FLA | Registered: Sep 2000 | IP: Logged

Don Doom
Matrix Veteran
Member # 1351
posted July 27, 2001 04:14 AM
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I have swap file to my back drive and set to 1.5GB size and it still does not work.? don
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[ July 28, 2001: Message edited by: Don Doom ]

Nemo · Post by **Nemo** » Fri Jul 27, 2001 12:45 pm

Same symptoms with the following specs:

Dell Inspiron 7.5k 650YT PIII 650
512 MB 100 MHz SDRAM, 25 GB UltraDMA/33
ATI Rage Mobility-P/M AGP 2x (8 Mb)
Sound Blaster Pro compatible integrated card, ESS M-2E
Running NT with sp 6

AlvinS · Post by **AlvinS** » Fri Jul 27, 2001 4:18 pm

Update to my problem

One wierd problem occured at the start of the 3rd turn in the 8th scenario. When I loaded the game my F formation of PzIIIE's were invisible with the exception of F4. All of my engineers were invisible also. They appeared in the unit listing as ready. I closed the scenario and reloaded it and they were visible again.

I started a new mega campaign and chose the train scenario. When I got to the map all of my units were invisible. The A0 unit was selected and you could see its movement radius but no icons. I exited the game and returned and the problem went away. I got a moderate victory and proceeded to the second scenario with no problems.

When I encountered the crash I had fast artillary off. I had been experimenting with some scenarios. I don't know if that woudl make a difference but I thought I should mention it.

Alvins

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Fri Jul 27, 2001 6:26 pm

Please send me a save of this "yugoslavian player" problem.