All,

I just don't get it. I've removed all start up programs, shut down all auto-loading programs via ms config and every 15-30 minites (on schedule) the game crashes to the destop.

I have 1GB free on my swap drive (an old 1.2 MB SCSI-2 drive) with 192MB system memory, Win98 an AWE-32 with 8MB of memory, a Matrox G200 with 16MB running in software mode (Hard ware mode is ugly). The main program drive is defragmented with 2.5 GB of free space (IDE 20GB drive, w9x partition of 5.0 GB). I use all the latest drivers and DirectX version.

Tech support has not deigned to answer and I'm just anoyed by this.

Does anyone have a vauge clue what else I can try? Changing the settings for 32 bit z buffer, bus mastering, device bitmap caching and polygon acceleration does not help. pdesk is disabled and so is netmeeting desktop sharing.


Any clues appreciated!

I have an AMD 800 mhz system w/ onboard sound and an Elsa Erazor X 256. The game crashed to desktop at the most critical times. I loaded up the game on my old PII 333 mhz w/sound blaster live and VooDoo 3 3000 and it NEVER happened again. I think it was the video card causing it because the more I pushed the card the more it happened.

If you haven't tried it already, let Windows manage your virtual memory (My computer, control panel, device manager, performance, memory) - Bradley swears it cures all known crashes. Or something like that

Hi Loremaster,


thanks for the suggestion. Since Windows was "managing my virtual memory" on my IDE (and fragmenting it!) the game was crashing so I reverted to usual setup - drive f: is the SCSI-2 where IE dumps it's temp files, windows has the temp dir and the OS is allowed to "Manage Virtual Memeory". Thus, the setting seemed to have no effect. However, I found the problem!

In the Matrox control panal if you remove the check mark from "Draw Colored curser with Hardware" and "Device Bitmap Caching" the crashes seem to cease. I don't know why, but it works!


Thanks,

Sam, smyling again

HI! It might not be relevant to your crashes, but I think I figured out why my game was crashing to the desktop from time to time.

I have two hard drives. Since the game is using one of them constantly, the other one shut down because of power savings. It happens that all of a sudden the game freezes, then I hear the othe hard drive starting up, then the game crashes to the desktop. So, I think disabling the auto turn off of my hd's should solve the problem.

Why this is happening? No idea! But it does happen that windows needs the hard drive for some weird reason from time to time even though I'm not using it.

Hope you get your problem fixed, it could be a nuisance!

Hi DaBear,

Thanks for the tip! I'll look into it. My "fix" slowed the crashes to once an hour. It looks like you might be right, I had power management turned on, and the hard drive was set to 1 hour and the monitor to 15 minutes. Hmm. perhaops thats the issue - the program or win98 is not sending/responding to the right signal. I'll let you know!