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1.05c Lockup while browsing army leaders

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Corporal
Jan 19, 2004
31
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Hi there,

I originally posted my problem to the CORE forum, but it turned out that it has nothing to do with the mod, but seems to be connected to HoI 1.05c.

While scrolling through the list of army leaders when trying to change a unit leader, HoI will lockup. This happens only with big major nations like Germany, USSR or the US. Smaller major nations like France and Italy are not affected. The lockup occurs faster while scrolling fast through the list, but will also occur after a while of just having the leader list open without scrolling.

As I said, the problem occurs only when playing 1.05c. 1.05 works fine.

My system is:

WinXP Professional
AMD Athlon 2600+
512 MB RAM
Geforce 4 TI 4200 with 128 MB
DirectX 9
Newest drivers installed

I'd be grateful for any fix or suggestions.

Catch22
 
Well the only time I have heard of this is with people that have CORE installed or have had it installed.
 
Castellon:
I did have CORE installed. Maybe I missed some files during uninstall. I deinstalled CORE and HoI, then deleted the remnants of the Paradox Folder. What else can I do?

Mithel:
How can I identify and delete the useless leaders? Does Starfire work with CORE? I would really like to play CORE, but it only works with 1.05c and 1.05c doesn't work because of the leader lockup.

Otherwise I will have to stick to vanilla which, even on very hard/aggressive, seems too easy.

Thanks for your help,

Catch22
 
It was one of the makers of CORE that had the problem, And I don't think we ever discovered what caused it.
Your best bet may be to try Mithel's solution.
 
If you're using CORE then you're using the Picture Pack which exists to add thousands of pictures of leaders. All these files will overload most systems (Windows architecture is poor at handling this many files in a folder). A simple solution is to delete all the files in GFX/Interface/Pics. You will no longer get any leader pictures but you should find that your system is much faster and doesn't hang.

This problem is going to get worse in 1.06 as the leader buffs are still adding lots more pictures. Just the other day, they added 40 politicians for Holland ...

Andrew
 
If the statement 'HoI locks up' refers to a complete freeze of the entire system (ie. image frozen, mouse doesn't move, no Alt-Tabbing anymore, needs the 5 sec press on power button to shutdown PC, etc.), then it's an overload of the AGP.

Since the original poster uses WinXP and an AMD XP processor, he likely has a VIA chipset, and, because of WinXP, the VIA AGP drivers installed.

Those buggers are notorious for freezing your PC when you are stressing the AGP. Microsoft even invented a name for the problem, Infinite Loop.

Jan Peter
 
Infinite loop is a programers term for a common bug to be avoided at all costs. ;) :)
 
Correct. :p

When it happens in software, you get Windows to tell you: "application X has stopped responding. Abort, continue".

On the level of the AGP hardware, it's something similar, in that a data packet is bouncing ad infinitum between the memory controller/AGP host and the AGP video board. The result is much, much nastier, in that the processor cannot access memory anymore, thus cannot respond to interrupts, which causes the PC to freeze completely.

Jan Peter
 
Hi there,

just noticed that a bunch of new replies popped up. The lockup is indeed a complete freeze. Are there any drivers apart from thze maybe malfunctioning VIA ones that I can install to fix the problem?

If not. How can I compile a list of all level 1 + 2 leaders of a given nation? I could then just remove the pictures for those leaders as I rarely use anyone below level 3. Would that work? I don't want to play without leader pictures. the pics give the game flavour...
 
Well, since you have the complete freeze, it's likely you are plagued with the AGP infinite loop.

Yes, there are a couple of things you can try, all of them ultimately are related to timing, since it's timing that (more than anything else) determines if the infinite loop surfaces or not.

1) Change the AGP Aperture size. You do this in your system's BIOS, usually under chipset or advanced chipset settings. You can choose between various settings there, but whatever you do, don't pick values lower than 16 MB (Windows cannot handle that) or more than half your installed RAM. Usually, 32 MB is a good setting.

2) Enable or disable AGP fast writes and/or sidebanding. Pick the setting that is currently not selected to change the timing behaviour.

3) Change your AGP speed to x2 or even x1. Again, this changes timing.

4) Install an older version of your display driver. Yes, you read that correctly. Older versions are generally less optimised code, and therefore slower. In case of AGP timing related problems, slower is usually better.

For all solutions here: Ultimately you will just be masking the problem. The real cause, the VIA 4in1 driver set, is still present. In a worst case scenario, you can end up with settings that allow HoI to work properly, but will cause freezing in another game.

Jan Peter
 
As for an alternate view of the leaders, you can look in the files or you can look at them in the reports.
 
Related Problem

I don't have any Mods loaded, but I have experienced a problem (only as France so far) when I go to change a leader on a stack.

I do not lock up, but rather I cannot selected any leaders. In fact, the scroll bar on the right begins jumping around on its own up and down the list. I can exit the menu, but if I return I cannot solve the problem. It is like it is possessed. :D

However, if I simply save the game and reload it I can access the leaders until the problem begins again.

Nothing that ruins that game...got another bug for that to report ;).... just something weird that seemed related.

Running 1.05c
Microsoft XP
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
2.09 GhZ
449 MB Ram
NVidia Graphics
 
Defrag your drive may help.
 
No, it most likely will not.

When the scroller thumb starts jumping up and down seemingly at random when you try to scroll, then it's a sign of a calculation overflow. Which means, in lamens terms, that the total virtual space (ie. all the leader bitmaps put in a single column one below the other) exceeds the max range reserved for what the scroll bar is designed to handle.

During the calculations an integer value either goes negative or, worse, overflows. When that happens, the final value for the scroller thumb will be something else then intended, hence the jumping up and down.

I've made the same mistakes myself when I programmed the scroller code for the list views in our own application. We solved it by scaling all integer calculations up to 64 bit, which our C++ compiler supports :p

Another way to solve it is to downscale the basic unit the scroller thumb represents. For example, switching from pixels to complete bitmaps representing 1 unit in the scroller. Unfortunately, either solution would require recoding of the source.

Jan Peter
 
Well that is not likely to happen. :( atleast not for quite a while.
But you could log it in the bug forum with the explanation for a fix.
 
The next best solution is, obviously, to ensure that the current scroller's virtual thumb space doesn't overflow. In other words, scrap some leaders.

Or (but this again requires source code change), implement some leader skill/trait filters that also in effect reduce the total virtual space for the scroller thumb. Actually, that might be considered a good idea anyway. If the total amount of leaders pushes the scroller over the limit, then there are too many in the list anyway for the list to be usable in any meaningfull way.

Edit: I have to check this, naturally, with my own HoI installation. If I can confirm this behaviour, then a bug report will be filed. Unfortunately, most of my spare time is devoted to improving the province.csv file contents for the current beta of EU2 right now.

Jan Peter
 
Yes deleting lots of useless low spec leaders is the workaround for now.
 
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