Matrix Games Forums

This has happened a couple of times now so I'm looking for solutions. Obviously it's extremely frustrating after doing an hours worth of orders.

The game is just completely freezing. On one occasion, after waiting about 20 seconds, it came back to life, but twice now it's completely frozen. On this occasion, there's still a small black message box on the screen. I was just cycling through air units, not doing anything special. I just transferred one air unit, it finished then locked up before I was able to click the next one. Nothing at all responding and I had to literally reset my PC because alt-tab-del put the task manager underneath the game window and I couldn't access it.

So, any similar problems and any solutions? I am on full screen so I'll try switching to windowed. Also I'm going to have to get used to saving every 10 minutes or something, because I'd done soooooo many orders and don't know where I am now

Posting your complete switch string from the shortcut would be a start.

1. Don't run any other programs in the background.

2. Maximise your RAM. 1GB is cutting it too fine, 4GB should be fine Even with no other programs running in the background, your OS uses up RAM.

Alfred

I don't know how to post a switch string, I'll do so when I find out.

I only have the basic windows stuff in the background, i.e I run this alone as I would any other game (and I don't have a problem running other, much more intensive games).

I have 16gb ram, I doubt that's the problem.

The game does run fine and mostly very smoothly, it's crashed 3 times in about 10 hours of play. I'll do routine saves until I solve it so at least I only lose 10 minutes or work or whatever. I'm on my first full campaign so I'm expecting to lose, so I'll just run the next turn from my previous save and do the stuff I did earlier on the next turn.

Try reading this stickied thread:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4592590

I used to run the game on a minimal platform with 2gbs of ram, some of which was shared with video.
It ran slow but never froze.

I now run on a 4.7ghz 8-core CPU with 32gbs of ram and a 6gb graphics card.
No problems whatsoever, but I do use many command line switches, including one for the multi-core cpu.

This seems to be about the game running slowly though. I have no performance issues, it runs very smoothly. It's just freezing up intermittently.

ORIGINAL: farflamex

This seems to be about the game running slowly though. I have no performance issues, it runs very smoothly. It's just freezing up intermittently.

The game engine design is decades old and it has routines that tie into long gone Windows OS routines (Win XP for example).
Every time Microsoft updated Windows to a new version they changed the 'hooks' required for the game engine to talk to the OS and vice versa. The switches are little software routines that can be activated to make the two understand one another. If you did not set up any switches, they will sometimes not know what to do next. Freezing suggests that is happening.

Read the info and set the switches!

I noticed that on my laptop (my first Win10 machine) I have the game setup to run in WinXP Service Pack 3 compatibility mode. The game works quite well on this machine. Could that be an answer when the switches aren't doing the trick?

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

I noticed that on my laptop (my first Win10 machine) I have the game setup to run in WinXP Service Pack 3 compatibility mode. The game works quite well on this machine. Could that be an answer when the switches aren't doing the trick?

That appears to be the case - Win XP is about the same vintage as the game so the hooks in the game program should connect with the right spots on the OS.