BSOD weird problem

[KaiserChicken]

First of all, I have already read jdm's excellent guide, but I couldn't find the solution to my problem there.

The problem is extremely weird: for 5 months, I have played Victoria normally in my computer, without any grave problems - until yesterday. Yesterday, the game suddenly CtD while I was saving one game with Austria. I found it weird, since it never had crashed after I installed 1.03b.

But anyway, since the game saved successfully, I thought it was just an ocasional crash, thus I restarted the game. When it was loading (in the Loading Graphics part, just after the Loading Sound), I suddenly got the evil, terrible BSOD and the computer rebooted. Once again, I thought it was just occasional. But it was not. Every time I tried to start the game, it crashed into that damn blue screen and the pc rebooted.

What have I done aready:

- Checked Windows Update - no updates to install
- Run dxdiag - no problems founf
- Defrag and Scandisk - no problems
- Installed and reinstalled Vicky

Nothing seems to work....

On an additional note, I have tried to run the game in 16 color depth. While in 32 I get the BSOD and the computer reboots, in 16 I get the BSOD and the game simply crashes back to desktop.

Help will be appreciated

 

[Castellon]

You have already tried #2 but try all three things together,
Also is this SP or MP game?
Okay let's try some standard things.
1) Rename the AVI folder to AVI_back
2) Set the color depth to 16BIT
3) Turn off everything in the background like E-mail/ICQ/Messenger, Virus protection and everything in the system tray beside the clock.

 

[KaiserChicken]

It's neither SP nor MP, it crashes on the loading screen, before the main menu appears. Anyway, I will try your advices and thanks for replying

 

[Castellon]

Okay the saving the game part is what I meant.

Try the three things together and let me know.

 

[jpd]

When you get a BSOD, it will have an exception code + description on it, plus a module name. When it happens again, take note of these and report them back. Knowing what exception code you got goes a long way towards determining the cause.

Jan Peter

 

[KaiserChicken]

When you get a BSOD, it will have an exception code + description on it, plus a module name. When it happens again, take note of these and report them back. Knowing what exception code you got goes a long way towards determining the cause.

Jan Peter

I thought about that! The problem is that that thing appears and disappears so fast that I don't have any way to see what is written! Is there any way to freeze the screen during a BSOD?

 

[jpd]

You are probably running on Win2K or higher. If so, you have to look in it's configuration settings to disable the auto-reboot after a BSOD. That is a function, normally associated with a configuration running as a server.

Either way, an entry regarding the BSOD crash should have been added in the system log. And you can view that log through the event viewer.

Jan Peter

 

[KaiserChicken]

I'm running on XP Professional. Do you know where can I disable the reboot after the BSOD in this OS?

The Windows shows an error report after recovering from the crash. Here it is:

BCCode : 1000008e     BCP1 : C0000090     BCP2 : 0047703C     BCP3 : F176B5D8
BCP4 : 00000000     OSVer : 5_1_2600     SP : 1_0     Product : 256_1

 

[KaiserChicken]

Here is the full event report, by the Event Viewer:

Origin: Save Dump
Type: Informations
Cathegory: None
Event ID: 1001

The computer was restarted by a default verification This verification was: 0x1000008e (0xc0000090, 0x0047703c, 0xf7978db8, 0x00000000). A memory dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini072304-04.dmp.

For more information go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

 

[KaiserChicken]

You have already tried #2 but try all three things together,
Also is this SP or MP game?
Okay let's try some standard things.
1) Rename the AVI folder to AVI_back
2) Set the color depth to 16BIT
3) Turn off everything in the background like E-mail/ICQ/Messenger, Virus protection and everything in the system tray beside the clock.

I did that and instead of getting the BSOD and having my computer restarted, the game simply crashes to desktop

 

[jpd]

Here is the full event report, by the Event Viewer:

Origin: Save Dump
Type: Informations
Cathegory: None
Event ID: 1001

The computer was restarted by a default verification This verification was: 0x1000008e (0xc0000090, 0x0047703c, 0xf7978db8, 0x00000000). A memory dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini072304-04.dmp.

0xc0000090 means a floating point error somewhere.

Since you get it during the 'loading graphics' phase, something in either the Vicky graphics files has been corrupted (not very likely, as it is all regular .bmp file data which doesn't use floating point calculations), or your graphics driver is messed up as a result of the initial crash with your save game.

Come to think of it, you said it was shortly after initializing sound. Do you have the in-game music enabled? If so, try disabling it through the configuration program. The in-game music is using MP3 encoding, and it's not unlikely it uses floating point calculations to decompress the sound data stream.

If that doesn't help, try a full (aka clean) reinstall of the game. If that doesn't work, try reinstalling the video driver.

Jan Peter

 

[KaiserChicken]

I doubt it is a sound problem. Between the "Initializing Sound" and the "Initializing Graphics" parts (when the game crashes), there is the "Initializing Interface", which is completed. If it was a sound problem, I think that the game would crash there. Besides, the music loads and starts playing. I have also tried disabling the sound but it crashes anyway.

I have already tried three clean reinstalls, so that is also a nonusable solution.

As you say, it is almost surely a graphic driver problem. However, I'm having serious trouble with it. I have a ATI RADEON IGP365 in a HP Compaq nx9010 notebook. Everytime I try to install the ATI drivers, I get a warning saying that I don't have ATI hardware installed in my computer, hence the installation will fail. I have already tried to contact ATI with this problem, but I got no response.

 

[jpd]

You should probaly try to download the graphics drivers from the compaq/hp site, using your computer model code to select the proper set.

Jan Peter

 

[KaiserChicken]

I will try that tonight.

Thanks for your time

 

[Castellon]

Did that clear up the problem?

 

[KaiserChicken]

yes it did. Thanks

 

[Castellon]

Great!