Help! Crash when exiting town

[axel]

Hi,

I've seen reports of this crash in other places and I suspect DirectX 8 may be the culprit, but I also see plenty of people running DirectX 8 and W&W just fine! I've tried software rendering and all three hardware modes, but my computer crashes when I exit the town right in the beginning! Sometimes it's immediate, other times I can actually move around for a couple seconds before it crashes. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I have lots of games and this is the only one I have a problem with!! I'm using the minimum installation. I haven't yet tried the monster 1.3GB installation.

My system is as follows:

Windows Me, DirectX 8.0
256 MB memory
3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP (latest drivers)
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (latest drivers)
plenty of hard drive space

Thanks,
Ritesh

[Wyvern]

How big is your swap file??

Seems that you've already ferreted around for the other posts on your problem and I'm no technical guru. I'll do a search though and see if I can pull up something you might have missed and we can both hope that one of the regulars with a lot more technical knowledge will charge in and save the day before too long!

Wyv

[Sazerac]

You may need to enable the compression codecs in your Control Panel. To do this, go to the Multimedia icon in Control Panel, click on the Audio tab, and then click on the "Advanced" button.

There's a thread I wrote on this in the "Windows 2000 Town Bug Fix" thread; it can be used with Windows ME as well.

-Sazerac

[Wyvern]

Axel - I see that Saz jumped right in with some helpful hints! I also pushed up a number of threads which may also give you some help solving the problem. Hope so! AND

WELCOME to the board!!

Wyv

[axel]

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm letting Windows manage my swap file and this has worked fine for me for several years. I have at least 10 GB free on C:, so my swap file should have plenty of room. W&W is installed on my D: drive, which has at least 15 GB free.

I've been in communication with Activision over the last week and the tech rep suggested removing all references to inactive video drivers in my registry. To do this, he said enter Safe Mode and go to the Device Manager, then all the devices you've ever used since the last clean installation of Windows will show up. I haven't done a clean install of Windows since 1995, so naturally I had *plenty* of inactive driver references. Well, I removed them all and nothing changed (not surprising since all those drivers were *inactive* anyway).

I'll try Saravec's suggestion of the Video Compression codecs, but I'm pretty sure that's already installed on my system. Besides, my problem occurs *outside* of town, not inside.

I know that at least Zardon and Todwest have the exact problem I do and it's certainly not worth re-installing Windows and DirectX 7.0 to get one silly game to work! Besides, there's plenty of case reports of people running this game successfully with DirectX 8.0.

I hope we figure this out because it looks like I'm missing out on a pretty good game!

Thanks,
Ritesh

[Wyvern]

Hope we do get it figured out because it is a good game!!

Keep watch - we've got a couple other techies that come up with good ideas too!!

Wyv

[axel]

Here's a guy on the Heuristic Park forum who just resorted to re-installing Windows with DirectX 7 and it worked! So this is further strong evidence that DirectX 8.0 is at fault here.

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And finally it runs...
by DoctorD posted 4/9/01 12:55:32 AM



Well my friends, after many months of waiting for HPI and Activision to step up to the plate, I finally broke down and decided to try what I deemed to be the last-ditch solution. I reformatted the hard drive, reinstalled Windows (98SE), and only upgraded to DirectX7.0a instead of 8.0. I also put in a new video card, going from a Diamond Viper II to a Geforce Prophet II MX. Since doing that stuff, I have been able to leave town without a crash (there's a world out there!!!) and have played for around 10 hours so far without a hitch. The Windows reinstall has not worked for everybody, but it appears to have worked for me. I still think that HPI/Activision is on the hook for some explanations (I won't hold my breath) since the dozens of other games I own weren't so tempermental to require such drastic fixes. Course, now I find that if you locate and talk to Scabban in the crypt before getting the "find Scabban" quest from the Wizard's Guild, it won't register- you can't get credit for the quest. Gads- I hope that I don't get all excited about FINALLY being able to play only to find that the game's still a buggy piece o' pooh.

[Sazerac]

It is true that DirectX 8.0 is at the root of a lot of the problems. I was concerned about that. Interestingly enough, not all of us have this problem, so it seems to be individual system sensitive. Windows Me seems to have a harder time with this problem than does Win 98 or Win 95, which is a pity, since most new systems are sold with Me as an operating system.

I hope Microsoft will come out with a better version of 8 or go to DirectX 9.0 fairly soon to fix the "bugs". W&W isn't the only thing that is affected by this, from what I've heard.

-Sazerac