Matrix Games Forums

Hello,

I'm running version 8.3 of SPWAW on Windows XP. I Started the game earlier today (far from being the first time I played it on my system), and when the opening video of the game's introduction began, the whole system crashed and my computer went through what seemed to be a soft reset. When the computer restarted, a system check initiated that looked for a "FAT 32' related problem on the data partition where the game is installed. Nothing was found, and the game started and played normally after that. Did I experience a Windows XP anomaly, a bug in the game, or could what I saw indicate that I've got a deep problem with my system? Has anyone else ever had this happen to them when starting SPWAW? Should I disregard this, or probe into it?

Cheers,
Mark

ORIGINAL: markt74

Hello,

I'm running version 8.3 of SPWAW on Windows XP. I Started the game earlier today (far from being the first time I played it on my system), and when the opening video of the game's introduction began, the whole system crashed and my computer went through what seemed to be a soft reset. When the computer restarted, a system check initiated that looked for a "FAT 32' related problem on the data partition where the game is installed. Nothing was found, and the game started and played normally after that. Did I experience a Windows XP anomaly, a bug in the game, or could what I saw indicate that I've got a deep problem with my system? Has anyone else ever had this happen to them when starting SPWAW? Should I disregard this, or probe into it?

Cheers,
Mark

You should run a chkdsk on the drive its installed on. From dos its CHKDSK C: /F
where C: is whatever drive its on. If its C: it will have to reboot in order to run the check. You'll probably be fine after that regardless of whether the results are good or bad.

Also EVERYONE running XP should really be using NTFS partitions instead of FAT32. FAT32 by Microsoft's own admissions now really sucks. You get crosslinked files and all sorts of problems that really cant happen with NTFS (which has a method of logging to prevent such things).

The rough statement for conversion is

CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS

The downsides to this are few but for one you can't dual boot with WIN9X/ME etc. But there are better ways to achieve that anyway. Such as VMware Workstation or Virtual PC. And DOSBox for that Matter (With the GUI front end which I forget the name of).

BTW use all these commands at your own risk. While I've never had or heard of a problem running them, if you do have a BAD hard drive or something the results might not be whats expected.

When your done run a disk cleanup using the XP System tool and then a defrag also using the XP System Tools.

I have a similar issue - see my previous posts. I checked the partitions and NTFS is already installed. Other ideas?

Vincent

Bearing in mind the number of similar posts (myself included) and not having ever had a problem with any previous upgrades of SPWaW, I think there are some serious issues with XP that have yet to be overcome. I say XP, as even though it works fine on some systems (it works on my XP laptop) there are too many other differing cards motherboards etc for it to be anything else? Either that, or not much homework was done on modern systems before release?

As for my Initialisation error I still haven't been able to solve the problem on this pc. Several trips to blogs, faqs, helpsites, drivers...all to no avail.

Come on all you very techie types this is becoming a serious issue

Cheers!

In many cases starting the game from 'spwaw quick start' or alternatively directly from 'mech.exe' (they are the same thing actually) will cure many problems. Especially if the game crashes during the intro video.

Voriax

Guys, I'm no tech wiz, but 8.3 starts fine using the mech.exe shortcut on my Dell Dimension 2400 (XP). I can also watch the intro video with WMP 10. The file is located in the main SPWaW directory.

(Note: we need to work on the SPWaW FAQs--)

I can recommend using the mech.exe directly if the problem is happening when going through the game menu. Also, of course, update drivers and check for any reported hardware issues in device manager. However, some folks do seem to have systems that are more sensitive to SPWAW in XP than others. We are looking into it and if we can find/duplicate the problem, we will post a fix.

Keep in mind 8.3 did not change the executable from 8.2, just the data/scenarios/campaigns, so it should not be causing any new problems you didn't have in 8.2 as far as compatibility issues.

My best suggestion in the meantime is that if you are experiencing issues, post your DxDiag file in the SPWAW support forum with a heading indicating that you are experiencing issues with XP and SPWAW. Every additional bit of info helps.

Regards,

- Erik