DW:ROTS locks-up well into game

DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (Full Version)

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Harry2 -> DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/22/2011 1:55:21 PM)
Well I'm hoping someone here can help me with the constant lock-ups I am encountering with DW:ROTS. The're making the game unplayable for me. They always happen well into the game, about year 2760 in game time. The screen will freeze and then if I click on any icon the screen will flash white and the pointer turns to the hourglass. It will stay like this indefinitely until I hit a key or mouse button at which poinrt i get an "Application is Not Responding" Windows error box. The only thing then is to end the application. There is no pattern to it that I can see: it happens when saving. not saving, zooming the mouse, not touching the mouse, in the galaxy map, in the tech tree screen, even when I am just sitting there doing nothing but watching the pretty coloured dots. i've updated all drivers and even uninstalled DW completely, including the left-over file folder, re-installed from scratch. I installed DW only up to 1.6 before installing ROTS. I have no such problem with just DW itself: only with DW:ROTS, both vs1.5 and 1.508 One thing I have noticed in the Resouce Monitor is the presence of a service called "prevhost.exe" after every such lock-up. At first it only takes 25% of the CPU but after each lock-up it takes more. At one point after several lock-ups it reached 98% of the CPU (all four cores!) and persitted after DW was shut down. The desktop was very laggy until I re-booted. The white flash makes me think it is a video issue but i don't know. Any suggestions would be appreciated. System: i7-920, 6Gb RAM, Win7 64bit, GeForce GTS250 1Gb Thanks Oh yes, I have uploaded a save game that contains a consistent lock-up and dxdiag files to the FTP server. DW_ROTS lockups Harry2.rar

Data -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/22/2011 4:40:34 PM)
Hi Harry2 and welcome to the forum. Well, for sure prevhost.exe is not DW related and from what I've googled so far it's part of the Windows setup (Preview Handler Surrogate Host maybe?). It's behavior might be triggered by load on your computer. Does this happen with any other game or just DW?

Harry2 -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/22/2011 5:05:59 PM)
Yes, Preview Handler Surrogate Host is what I found too but I have no idea what its for, if its related to my problem at all, and if its is, ...is it's presence the cause or a symptom? I don't play too many games but the lock-ups only occur in DW:ROTS. In fact plain DW without the ROTS addition, works perfectly. [&:] But I really prefer to play with the ROTS addition. Thanks

Theluin -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/22/2011 5:58:03 PM)
Try installing ROTS without patching the vanilla DW at all. I think it was mentioned on this forum somewhere that it helps.

Data -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/22/2011 7:06:05 PM)
If you're into it you can use process explorer or process monitor from sysinternals to try and get more info about this process and the dw process when the issue occurs. Given your system I think it should handle a normal rots game even during a late stage when you probably have tons of everything. Btw, if you try a smaller galaxy with less objects do you encounter the issue during late game?

Harry2 -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/23/2011 8:40:24 PM)
Well, I tried Theluin's suggestion (thank you Theluin) to re-install without patching vanilla DW then adding ROTS. I thought that had the problem licked after a very long game (4 hrs) session without incident...until I tried to do a manual save. I'm pretty sure its a file save issue because it locked up again today while I was in the main menu, trying to delete an old manual save file. Autosave works OK (so far, fingers crossed, knock-on-wood) but a manual save will lock-it up every time. Data, I have been testing on a very small map (250 stars) with only 5 empires besides my own. I will try those apps you mentioned. Thanks for the suggestion. Regards

Data -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/24/2011 10:53:04 AM)
Like you said....fingers crossed, knock-on-wood [:)] Good to hear that the autosave works at least

Harry2 -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/24/2011 7:43:48 PM)
Re: the Manual save lock-ups...I discovered that the game was trying to save the game in an odd place, not in the ..AppData\Roaming\Code Force Limited\Distant Worlds\1.5.0.8\SavedGames folder. That may have been because I neglected to delete that folder when I re-installed from scratch. So I deleted it this time and started a new game...hoping that it would set up a new folder that it liked. That seemed to work and I was able to save any way I wanted during a lengthy session last night. Today, on the same game, autosaves OK, but first Manual Save...lock-up. But...I found I could do a Manual Save As, and autosave still works. So, Autosave: Yes Manual save: No Manual Save As: Yes I don't know iof this is a Win7-64bit issue or not, but, two out of three...I can live with that. Thanks for your help

Data -> RE: DW:ROTS locks-up well into game (9/24/2011 8:02:10 PM)
Man, that was a long and tough journey [:)] The difference between save and save as is that the process / os has to consider apriori a new location for the latter so it does indeed seem to be a location problem with the current save in case of the manual save that fails. But for both cases the location should be the same so......I feel the headache coming back again[sm=00000007.gif]

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