DirectX 7 and desktop crashes

[Druadic]

Win98 SE
PIII 450
128 MB RAM
ATI Rage Fury Video with latest driver
Sound Blaster Live Value with latest driver

PERFECT! An ATI Rage Fury (which I have), a Sound Blaster Live (or X-Gamer compatable / Which I have), I have 512MB of RAM, an AMD Athlon Thunderbird at 900MHz and run ALMOST the same OS, but I have the THIRD release.

These items should all work like they did for you.

NOW, I will admit the Diamond Sound card S90 (Sonic Fusion) HAD TONS OF PROBLEMS BEFORE this game. I have NO IDEA why. I will admit though once I got rid of the card and got an X-Gamer ($79 at Best Buy) I had NO SOUNDS PROBLEMS. But the S90 ran without a hitch on W&W. The other games it bombed out!

Don't ask, I have no idea why. I personally think the SB AWE 32 was 200 times better than the Diamond Cards. Diamond has a few problems - the S3 cards mostly have sound errors when games ran on my S90 and they were either scratchy or they just refused to load. Maybe it is best that you do get a better sound card TODWEST. I also know that 99% of the ATI cards work EXCEPT FOR THE DDR memory ones. Like I said to the people on the HP forum, the DDR memory has too many bugs and is still in the BETA stages. But of course the companies will STILL RELEASE the items in a frenzy to sell them as fast as they can. Notice also DDR memory chips are not easy to find and buy. They are overpriced and can't be found at 99% of the stores. New motherboards are going to use them, but unless they fix the problems then they'll bomb out of that "technology" too.

Good luck TODWEST. Get an SB X-Gamer or just any Live! version and you'll be MUCH happier. Trust both of us!!!

Sincerely;
Druadic

Todwest,
Prior to installing W&W I had updated DirectX to version 8.
The game crashed often, froze repeatedly, and finally locked me either in or out of The Serpent Temple in EVERY saved game, including those prior to having even reached Ishad N'ha.
Not only was part of my problem having a bad stick of memory, BUT My boyfriend said that he read some reviews on DirectX 8 and it was being said that it is not compatible with ALOT of games on the market and was proving to hinder rather than help gamers play without game errors.
Unfortunately, DirectX 8 does not have an uninstall option.
Knowing it was time for me to clean house anyway, I reformatted my hard drives and reinstalled everything I needed to run Windows.
I re-installed W&W and let DirectX 7 be installed with the CD and viola, the game has played error free ever since.
Your problem could lie with DirectX 8.
I am not knowledgable enough to take you step through step of the removal of DX8 short of just reformatting and starting from scratch.
Maybe one of our wiser forum members could help you out there.

: )
Moni

P.S. My DxDiag through the sound tab says 4.05 regarding the sound drivers for my SoundBlaster 128.

: )

[This message has been edited by Moni (edited 03-12-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Moni (edited 03-12-2001).]

[todwest]

A reformat is the only option with all DirectX products unless you are upgrading. At least that's what I've been told. Of course that's probably wrong. And seeing as I can no longer run any kind of video without the computer crashing, I will be spending all f***ing day doing just that. I wish that ONE manufacturer in the PC industry, just one time, would release a product that actually works. It seems to me that the best you can hope for these days is a product that might work for 95% of the people out there. As I said in an earlier post, it's a good thing that they don't make pace-makers, or ANY OTHER PRODUCT UNDER THE SUN. Have you EVER heard of a recall in the PC industry? I sure haven't. Why do we let them get away with this? They say that they are forward thinking innovators, but can't seem to make one single product or application that works every time. I wait with baited breath for such an occurance. They are crooks and are now getting their just desserts with the NASDAQ breaking the 2000 support level. I hope they ALL go bankrupt!!! We need new blood

[Morrak]

hav eyou tried disabeling your sound card in windows then running it..? i had that problem with darkstone... i have to play it without sound, it runs the intro sounds fine, bu twhen i step up and hit a creature, or any "triggered sound" it locks my box up solid...

about computer games working for everyone, all teh time...

actually, with all the different hardware, OS's, software, TSR's, and just about anything found on someones computer, its very difficult to write something that will work for everyone from the very start... you would have to strip out a lot of the cool stuff to insure that it works... and then theres problems with our own computers that we dont see... things like video cards heating up and locking the games up which has happened to me on D2 even though it doesnt on any other game... in order to play D2 i have to put in a spare video card which i have laying around the house...

[Dr.Orangutan]

im another sorry sap i bought a diamond monster fusion voodoo2 3-d card and it sucks there are no patches for it ,only banshee patches that change its name and make many games incompatible with it , i have a soundblaster 512 sound card that is fine no problems there plenty of ram and speed pent 2 300 196 megs ram
20 gig hard drive, and yet my game crashes :
A)loading a game
B)saving a game
C)entering town
D)leaving town issed:
E)looking at the jounal
F)entering or exiting dungeons
G)every time the game starts the deepsix program has a FATAL error even though
the game will play ok

i have the patch and that didnt change a thing and i also have directx7.0a

Dr. Orangutan,
Your problem apears to be a bad install of the game although I can say that with total certainty.
My first install after the reformat did not allow me to click on the computer icon to change anything in the game i.e. graphics, sond, spawn rate, etc without Deepsix commiting a fatal error and locking up my system.
An uninstall, followed by deleting the leftover folders, followed by a re-install fixed it.
You can copy your save folder away from the game and put them back as so not to lose them and them copy over the new empty folder when you reinstall.
Carg says to copy your roster.dat file as well although I didn't and the game did not have any problems recognizing my older saved games. Maybe I just got lucky. ; )

Todwest,
SO sorry you too had to do the whole reformat thing. I sincerly hope that you can get the game working with your system.
Big Hugs,
Moni

[todwest]

Here's the verdict. After the reformat and getting rid of the dreaded DirectX 8.0a, what do you know, the game runs fine. Another fine Microsoft product. Thanks for all the feedback and help guys. I shout this from the highest mountaintop, do not use DirectX 8.0. It will not let you revert back to any earlier versions of the product. You have to REFORMAT in order to get rid of it!! Stick with 7.0 or 7.0a until there is a stable version. Maybe it would be best to skip this generation entirely and chalk it up as a misfire. Hopefully DirectX 9 will give you the old options. We should let Microsoft know about our displeasure.

Thanks,
todwest

Todwest,
Glad you got it all working well finally!
It sux to have to go through so much trouble to put your machine back into working order when someone you trust (Microsoft) puts out a bad product.
I would get in line to tell them what I think of it but they are big enough that they don't have to listen and I doubt that they would.
They had to know that DX 8 was a piece of garbage and they should realize by now that they can't force the market to upgrade with every new opportunity anymore.

: )
Moni

[Sazerac]

Yeehaw, Todwest!! I'm so glad for you! I've been following this thread with considerable interest, although I made no post, because frankly, I couldn't figure it out! To think it was DirectX 8.0 that was the culprit.

Well, that's Microsuck for you. Why else do you think the U.S. Department of Defense completely abandoned Windows NT and Windows 2000 as operating systems and have fully embraced Linux Red Hat? Says a lot, I'd say.

Hope everything works well for you now!

-Sazerac

[Zardon]

TodWest, Good job on fixing the Error.

Now the question I put before this board is. What if you don't or can't reformat your drive to get rid of DirectX 8? I mean I haven't had any problems with DX8 with any other piece of software. And as much as I would like to lay blame on MicroSoft. I sorta can't on this one. HPI or Activision should have caught this problem by now and have released a statement that Wizards & Warriors is not compatitable with DirectX 8.

Also, Don't forget why we all have Window PC. It's because gaming companies don't write programs for Amiga, Atari, Macs, Apples, UNIX, VAX, OS2, BeOS, or Linux.