Very bad lock up prob...Help ASAP

[Jamminji]

Hi all... I have an odd problem in PBEM. Everything was working fine then on about turn 5 or 6 of 13 he sent me his turn and I can click on it and then slick the start button. The game is in slot 3. It does load and brings up the password screen. I type my password in and it takes it. The password diolog box goes away and I now can press the start button. When I press the start button I see the hard drive light go and the little map in the bottom right corner pops up. But the main game map never comes up. The hard drive stops running after a little while, the mouse is frozen, and the only thing I can do is ctrl/alt/del out of the game. I have one other pbem game with the same guy in slot 4, and that one is working fine. I also have 3 other pbem games with another person in slots 5/6&7, and they are all working fine. Is there a problem with slot 3? What can I do to fix this? Any help would be much appreciated.


jam

[Hill 621]

Never, may your oppenent have make a send error, or scenario have a bug simply...

[john g]

Hi all... I have an odd problem in PBEM. Everything was working fine then on about turn 5 or 6 of 13 he sent me his turn and I can click on it and then slick the start button. The game is in slot 3. It does load and brings up the password screen. I type my password in and it takes it. The password diolog box goes away and I now can press the start button. When I press the start button I see the hard drive light go and the little map in the bottom right corner pops up. But the main game map never comes up. The hard drive stops running after a little while, the mouse is frozen, and the only thing I can do is ctrl/alt/del out of the game. I have one other pbem game with the same guy in slot 4, and that one is working fine. I also have 3 other pbem games with another person in slots 5/6&7, and they are all working fine. Is there a problem with slot 3? What can I do to fix this? Any help would be much appreciated.


jam

Sometimes things like this happen, a turn gets farkled and you can either have you opponent try to send the turn again as is (if you assume that the turn was farkled in transmit) or have him play the turn again and send that version (if you assume that it was farkled as he was saving or playing). A percentage of secure games will crash like this, it just happens.
thanks, John.

[Jamminji]

He has re-played and re-sent it 3 times... no luck. I guess it is my turn to re-play and resend my previous turn. I do not understand how that will help though. because my previous turn works for him (that is how he has re-played it 3 times) If I replay mine then it should also work for him so what would be the reason. hmmm very bad thing.

[chief]

I would suspect someone change a parameter inadvertantly. Check preferences and before he sends you his turn, delete ur steel.prf file it may help. You've got nothing to lose.

[Jamminji]

Thanks chief... Will deleting my prf file effect the other 4 email games I am playing?

what is the prf file? what does it do?

jam

[chief]

I can tell you its the preference file and for me it shows up every time I save. But your playing a PBEM game and the results may be different. The file reconstructs itself every turn. Best I can do. Someone else had better jump on this one. Check it out in your save folder in SPWAW.
If you don't send it you should be able to delete it. No Guarantees

[Grimm]

One "trick" I have found is patience.

Once you end your turn and hit save, the program takes you back to the saved game screen. Once there, count to 20 and then exit the game. Usually about "10" or so you will hear the HD accessed. For whatever reason, the game is not "fully" saved right away. By delaying at the saved games screen for a moment, I have not had anymore of those corrupt file problems in PBEM games.

It may be that your opponent is saving the turn and then immediately exiting the game. Tell him this trick and see if it helps. I have no scientific explanation (I'm sure its a DOS thing) to explain this - just experience with this problem in the past.

Let me know if this helps.

[chief]

Grimm's advice is right on the mark.

[Jamminji]

One "trick" I have found is patience.

Once you end your turn and hit save, the program takes you back to the saved game screen. Once there, count to 20 and then exit the game. Usually about "10" or so you will hear the HD accessed. For whatever reason, the game is not "fully" saved right away. By delaying at the saved games screen for a moment, I have not had anymore of those corrupt file problems in PBEM games.

It may be that your opponent is saving the turn and then immediately exiting the game. Tell him this trick and see if it helps. I have no scientific explanation (I'm sure its a DOS thing) to explain this - just experience with this problem in the past.

Let me know if this helps.

We have heard of this and follow it. I have found that if you do not so this then you get a "Save Game can not be loaded" error. Once we started follwing this procedure things ran smooth. Our problem now is that the battle "loads" fine and I can put my password. but when I hit start it trys to load the map but can't and then hangs.

We ended up going back 2 turns full turns and re-playing and it worked. I did discover that the rec and the dat files were the problem they both had a hard time copying. The other 2 copied fine.


thanks for everyones help!!!

jam

[chief]

Hope your games go smooth ....good luck