hi all....

Once upon a time, about five months ago, i enthusiasticly install WW.

But my party was killed by a BUG so often that i gave up and unistalled, in disgust!

But i wish to try again, appreciating this game so. Maybe someone here can tell me some helps, first.

I would lock up, have to reset my computer, *sometimes* when i leave the town
after I traded at the shop, at the game beginning. I say "sometimes' as often I can leave the twon and go to the cemetary dungeon and return and leave again with out any problems.
...thus this may NOT be the "codec' problem.

tends to lock up if i do much of any changes to my characters within town, like buy and sell, a hassle as if i do a complicated trade, and lose the game, that trade is gone too, as i can only save out of town!

I have...sigh...dirextx 8.1 on a win98SE system.

I figure that is the culprit!
Maybe, just maybe, i can run the game in software mode.

however...i wonder if there are other tricks that i can try.

win98Se
athlon 1.5
1000megs swap file
356 ram.
lost of hd space.
19" monitor with a 1070 X [?]600 screen at 32 bit color

maybe the resolution is too too high?
maybe i need 600 x 800 at 16bit in hardware.
maybe just 'software" is good.
graphic look so good that i did not want to go downwards!

Is this a dirextx 8.1 issue?
will software cure this directx issue, if i go that route?

or...
is this "merely" an issue with the resolution and color type?

game does not lock up anywhere else.
does not lock on entering the town, only if...say...i go to the shop and buy and sell and then leave the town and not lock up everytime. either, when i sell.
does no crash to desktop: just the mouse curser just hourglassess away forever....

[ i wonder if it is SUPPOSSED TO: mousecurser take, say, four minutes, sometimes, before i leave town?!!]

thanks...freestone

OK the standard answer. Run scandisk and defrag your hard drive.

I don't believe it's your resolution and probably not Dx 8.1, since it offers very good Dx7 compatibility. Of course there have been a lot of issues with DirectX but I believe them to be driver related. I would like to know what graphics card you have and also what drivers. I would also recommend a look here.

Second part of the standard answer: turn off all unneeded applications and run just W&W. Do a ctrl-alt-del to bring up the task manager and let us know what's in there -- on occasion, stuff in there has caused problems.

I run on Win 98 SE, and have no problems... so it's doable [img]smile.gif[/img] I run in 800x600 resolution in software mode; it's less prone to problems. It also doesn't take advantage of cool hardware graphics stuff, but I'm not a graphics kind of guy [img]smile.gif[/img]

When you installed the software, did you do a full install or a partial? I recommend a full install... much easier.

Go with that, and let's see what else comes up.

I thank you two.....WillowIx and
Bungleau
for your help.

what I probably will do is to install into software mode.

Yes, i have done all that....defrag, no background...etc..etc...
I have a Gainward "golden sample" 450 geforce3 vid card. directx 8.1.
fairly late drivers, certainly later, by far, than the game release date; *that* could even be a problem!
anyway....as i say, i did not ever "crash"! upon leaving the towngates, only once in a while would the system just hang up where the mouse hourglass curser just ticks ever onwards...
only happens when i do some changes to the stats in the characters, even with only three of them. the more trading, the more chances of hanging up.

but i had gone into the cypts and back out and in again and town to cypts and out and in: *Probably* not a "codec" issue!

the only other thing that might be causing it is that i ran the game in
1078 X [?]700 resolution, with my 19" monitor, at 32 true color.

so.
*would* it help to run the game in hardware mode with , say, 800 x 600, or even 480 by 600?!!

I have lots of ram...356 worth.
lots of hd space.
a 1000 meg fixed swap file.

My athlon, even with the athlon bridge patch, that was applied, is "supposed" to be a bit flaky transfering files!!

My own diagnosis has to do with something about the file transfers when i, say, buy ten items and sell 4 items, taking 20 minutes of carefull pondering for the best deal, and then lock up: what a d...r...a...g : kills the game for me, this does! but there Should be lots of room, for this file transferings!
so maybe the resolution could be a factor, but i do not want to spend there days changing resolutions either: probably will just run it under software mode.

i recall someone saying that sometimes the hourglass is suppossed to "run forever"...but five minutes?!! *could* it be just that, that i need to let the hourglass run ten minutes, at the gate, after much town activity?!!
---not a good game program design!

thanks...freestone

Try it in 800x600 software mode, and see what happens. That has been a fairly stable configuration for a lot of people. Note that you don't have to reinstall to do this -- just go into the game settings.

If it doesn't work there, then the problems are more basic.

And Willow wants your *EXACT* vid card driver levels... it's amazing what that woman can do with a couple of numbers [img]smile.gif[/img]

You know, I know I have seen this problem posted before! Anyway did you check the codec settings? If not then do so. Crashes when leaving town could be caused by this. HA! Found it in Saz's old tech thread and it is a little different than our answer in the tech thread. Now you can no longer download the codecs from the site in the quote. But we have some links to alternate download sites here on this board. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I would also recommend you try a full install. It may be that your CD is having trouble catching up with the game.

[ 12-12-2003, 07:44 AM: Message edited by: WillowIX ]