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Old 05-12-2004, 09:55 AM   #1
Robalex
Dungeon Master
 

Join Date: February 8, 2004
Location: The Hub of the Golden Horseshoe Canada
Age: 76
Posts: 61
Exclamation

I'm using Windows 98se with an ATI Rage Fury 128 video card Direct X 7.0 Creative Sounblaster Live and 10gigs of free memory. I noticed that if I quit and reload more than a few times during gameplay(especially at LVLUP in order to role better stats) eventually my screen freezes and I have to reboot. I have noticed this is more prevalent when the sound music indicates monsters near. It doesn't crash otherwise only if I want to quit without saving. I tried to leave a space in Sav screen for this & saved first then quit and it helped a bit but in the end the screen still froze when I pressed the X button after several reloads.
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Old 05-12-2004, 12:08 PM   #2
Wyvern
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Join Date: January 7, 2001
Location: Rural Paradise, MI
Posts: 5,701
Hi Robalex!

I can't offer any suggestions on the crashing problem but I'm sure that some of the regulars with excellent techie advice will be along soon.

There is no real advantage to rerolling a level up. There are lots of threads on this particular topic if you care to ferret around for them. The game has it's own strange logic and while I will agree that it would have been a wise move to reward players at each level up that isn't quite how W&W works. In the long run it all works out. Rerolling tends to just increase your need to reroll every time. It isn't worth the time and effort. By the time you get well into the game, you're characters will develop very nicely without any rerolling.

Wyv
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Old 05-13-2004, 10:51 AM   #3
Bungleau
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Join Date: October 29, 2001
Location: Western Wilds of Michigan
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Ten Gig of free memory? Well, Win 98 can only hand 512MB, so if you're talking about RAM, it's not being used. If you're talking about hard drive space, that's good... If you're talking about virtual memory, that's pretty much useless.

Things I'd do... and my old environment is what you have.

1. Upgrade to DX 9.0B. I'm running on Win98 with that (patched), and I have no problems.

2. Set your virtual memory to be a fixed amount at 1-2 times your actual memory.

3. There have been a number of video-related crashes. Make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound and audio cards, and consider dropping down your specs (to software-mode graphics and a lower resolution).

4. You might consider applying the patch (link in the Tech Tips thread). It does many amazing things... and takes away a couple as well.

5. Make sure you don't have anything else running (file sharers, other memory-resident programs). They can cause problems.

6. Defrag your hard drive. It's amazing what that can do.

Give those a shot and see what happens. I can guarantee that it works in your environment... I've run it. Post back with more system specs (memory, virtual memory, etc.).
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Old 05-13-2004, 10:09 PM   #4
Robalex
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Thx Bungleau I defragged the drive (it was @ 91%) My drivers are all updated. I can't install DX above 7.0 with my video card Rage 128. There is no support. I have 512mg mem with 28% being utilized. The only program I'm running is Nprotect from Norton Utilities. Windows is at present handling Virtual Memory. I hope this helps. I'm going to try ending the Nprotect when I play the game. Let me know if I should manually handle Virtual Memory with a Min 500mg .
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Old 05-13-2004, 11:00 PM   #5
Bungleau
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Have you tried running DX9? Yeah, it may not be supported, but that doesn't mean it won't work. It only means that ATI hasn't tested the drivers to make sure they work. I would give it a shot anyway -- you can always go back. I ran DX9 on my ATI Rage Fury Maxx vidcard, which has either 64 or 128MB (can't remember which).

You might also run dxdiag to see what's going on in that area. You can test the drawing abilities, and downgrade 'em if you need to.

As for virtual memory, I NEVER let Windows handle it. A fixed swap file (which is what it is) is almost always superior. On my Win98 machine (which runs with 512MB of memory as well), I have... 1536 MB of virtual memory, or three times my physical memory. That actually feels like overkill, so I'll probably cut it back down soon. Somewhere around a gig (1024 MB) is more than sufficient.

See, what happens is that Windows uses some space on the hard drive to store that virtual memory. And when your 512MB of memory gets full, the oldest stuff gets put in that space on the hard drive instead of back where it belongs on the hard drive. Once that space is full, it starts sending things home.

When you let Windows manage it dynamically, it creates a single file at the minimum size level (500MB in your case). If it needs more space, it goes out and adds it... often in a completely different place on the hard drive. Fragmenting a hard drive is bad enough, but fragmenting memory? Far worse...

Setting a fixed size means that it will always be contiguous on the hard drive -- it won't be scattered all over. And if possible, put it on your second hard drive (doesn't everyone have one these days? ). That increases performance even more.

I'd also run msconfig to see exactly what's being launched when you start Windows. On Win98, you only see the active programs in the task manager, but there can be many others in the background. Drop a new post if you have questions about what some of them may be, and whether you want them or not.

Give that a shot and let me know. Then we can try something else [img]smile.gif[/img]
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Old 05-14-2004, 06:51 PM   #6
Robalex
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For Bungleau: Using Msconfig the only box checked off is Nprotect. I put the minimum virtual mem at 1024 and max at 3972. As I said my total free space in that drive is about 11.5g. What should the max be set at. I tried running the game again and after about 10 reloads it still froze. So the only thing I haven't changed is the DX from 7.0 to DX 9. When I changed to DX8 awhile back my whole computer crashed and nothing would load. I had to reinstall Windows 98 and that was a pain in the butt so you can see how wary I am about changing DX. What I had works fine with other games such as Wiz 8, Fallout 2 and other such games of 5 or so years ago.
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Old 05-14-2004, 11:13 PM   #7
Bungleau
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Join Date: October 29, 2001
Location: Western Wilds of Michigan
Posts: 11,752
First off, set your min and max sizes to the same value: 1024. Anything else, and you're asking for trouble, in my book.

If you have a second hard drive, put your virtual memory space on it. IOW, virtual memory should not be on drive C: if you can avoid it. That just improves performance overall.

I'm more than a wee bit impressed that the only thing running at startup in msconfig is nprotect. On my Win98SE system, which I like to think is fairly lean, I have about two dozen applications that run at startup, including virus protection, systray, task monitor, video driver stuff, and more. Is there nothing else showing? Checked or unchecked?

As for DX8, there were problems with DX8.0A when it came out, and back then, the board wisdom was to avoid DX8. Those issues were taken care of with a later version of DX8, and DX9 has been bug free for me. What I would suggest, if you're nervous about it, is making a fresh start disk so that if it goes all nasty, you can reboot and put it back the way it was. If you're completely paranoid, install Win98 on a second hard drive, put DX9 and the game on there, and boot from that one to see how it works. If it doesn't, you can switch back to the original hard drive and we can regroup from there.

I will mention that I've noticed a strange behavior on my system occasionally... the game appears to freeze. However, I can still hear movement sounds (footsteps and so on), and I've found that the game will actually come back to life in a few seconds (okay, tens of seconds). I believe a defrag cleaned up that problem; a full defrag, that is, with everything possible being moved.

Let's try that and see what happens.
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Save Early, Save Often Save Before, Save After
Two-Star General, Spelling Soldiers
-+-+-+
Give 'em a hug one more time. It might be the last.
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