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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [Napoleonics] >> Crown of Glory >> Crown Of Glory Support >> GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP

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GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/14/2006 11:22:49 PM

Wellesley

Posts: 21
Joined: 3/12/2006
Status: offline

Hi,

Just witnessed the second time that Crown of Glory crashed to desktop. HUGELY annoying cuz I was just kicking Austria's ass all the way back to Vienna and had Prussian and Russian armies converging on me.

What happens is: I click on a button in Crown of Glory after approximately an hour of play. Doesn't matter which button.

Game freezes and hard drive goes completely mad - looks like its dumping a lot of bits 'n' pieces to me.

Then game crashes to desktop, with message that "CrownofGlory.exe has created errors" and will be closed

Now is it me or is this game eating A LOT of resources, especially RAM memory? Could that be the reason why my Win2K has to resort to HDD swap-files? Because that would explain the HDD going nuts before the crash.

Anyway, I'd like this sorted plz

Cheers,
Wellesley

Post #: 1

RE: GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/15/2006 12:30:20 AM

Erik Rutins

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline

Hi,

Which version of CoG are you currently running?

Please post a DxDiag file for us, per the instructions at the top of this forum. Thanks, hopefully we'll get this fixed up for you.

Regards,

- Erik

_____________________________

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC

For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

(in reply to Wellesley)

Post #: 2

RE: GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/15/2006 12:01:42 PM

Wellesley

Posts: 21
Joined: 3/12/2006
Status: offline

Here you are, Erik, and thnx in advance.

Attachment (1)

(in reply to Erik Rutins)

Post #: 3

RE: GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/15/2006 7:15:11 PM

ericbabe

Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline

Are you running the most current versions?

You should have enough RAM based on your system specs, but if you have other applications resident your machine may be low on memory.

What are your page file settings? Do you let Windows allocate the page file or have you set it to a fixed size?

Based on your description of the problem it sounds as though your system is getting bogged down. COG should fit in memory on a 512MB machine; perhaps adjusting other applications you might have running or the page file settings might free up more memory and solve the problem.

Have you tried running in low animation mode and/or in no-sound mode? If it doesn't crash in these modes, then chances are very certain that it is a low-memory issue.

(in reply to Wellesley)

Post #: 4

RE: GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/16/2006 11:53:28 AM

Wellesley

Posts: 21
Joined: 3/12/2006
Status: offline

I.e.: you don't know why it is happening then. Hm.

I'm quite surprised to hear that it could be a memory problem... Some of the most top-heavy 3D-games run smoothly on this rig but CoG can't?

That's odd. Is the compiling how you'd like it?

(in reply to ericbabe)

Post #: 5

RE: GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/16/2006 4:23:16 PM

Erik Rutins

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline

Wellesley,

We're asking questions to help determine the problem. Can you tell us which version you are running please?

Looking at your DxDiag, I see two interesting things:

1. You are running Windows 2000 SP4
2. You have two active sound devices. The driver on one of them is from 2002, the other is 2001.

I'm 90% sure the problem is in the area of your sound system. Please see if you can set yourself up so that you only have one sound device (you should be able to switch off the integrated AC97 in your BIOS) and update the SB PCI drivers to the latest revision. Here's what you've got now:

Description: SB PCI
Driver Name: sbpci.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.5017 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
Date and Size: 10/22/2002 14:45:42, 668160 bytes
Driver Provider: Creative Technology Ltd.

Description: Avance AC97 Audio
Driver Name: ALCXWDM.SYS
Driver Version: 5.10.0000.3800 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
Date and Size: 12/17/2001 10:27:06, 265143 bytes
Driver Provider: Avance Logic, Inc.

Regards,

- Erik

_____________________________

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC

For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

(in reply to Wellesley)

Post #: 6

RE: GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/16/2006 4:25:09 PM

Erik Rutins

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wellesley
... Some of the most top-heavy 3D-games run smoothly on this rig but CoG can't?

By the way, on a 1.7GHz Celeron with 512MB RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro you won't be running the latest 3D games smoothly. I have a similar system and I'm sure of it.

However, it should be enough to run CoG.

Regards,

- Erik

_____________________________

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC

For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

(in reply to Wellesley)

Post #: 7

RE: GAME CRASHES TO DESKTOP - 3/16/2006 5:22:58 PM

ericbabe

Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wellesley
I.e.: you don't know why it is happening then. Hm.

I'm quite surprised to hear that it could be a memory problem... Some of the most top-heavy 3D-games run smoothly on this rig but CoG can't?

That's odd. Is the compiling how you'd like it?

I don't know why it is happening. It is often difficult to diagnose technical computer problems without knowing all of the necessary details. We've never had anyone reporting a crash-to-display that happened in this manner before.

I can run COG on a machine with only 128MB, though with heavy virtual memory caching, so it does run on low-memory systems. However, I've found that the stability of virtual memory varies from system to system, being heavily dependent upon other applications that might be resident in memory.

COG uses a lot of RAM, but does not use much video card memory, so it isn't directly comparable to the sort of 3D games you mention, which typically are more dependent upon the video card for their performance and for the storage of their textures. It actually takes much less RAM to store a 3D object and its textures than it does to store a series of video sprites that represent a 3D object.

The double sound devices that Erik found in your DxDiagnostic could possible be causing this problem. The Windows 2K machine we test on had a GPF problem when I had both the Sound Blaster device and the motherboard's sound card both activated, though in that case it crashed as soon as the sound file data was initiated. I'm not sure whether a sound card conflict would cause heavy drive caching -- you could perhaps check your Performance Monitor and see whether the drive access you report before a crash is simply just drive access or whether it is actual VM caching.

I compile the program using the standard Microsoft run-time libraries using optimizations for speed (in some places) and size (in other places). I'm not sure why you ask. Do you have any compiler options in mind that you think we ought to be using? The actual executable file is very small, only a few MB's -- the vast majority of the RAM used by COG is dynamically allocated to hold the graphics and sound data -- and compiler options won't affect this, excepting perhaps for quad byte alignment, which we do use, as this greatly enhances the speed of the application.

(in reply to Wellesley)

Post #: 8